A laid-off employee has gone viral after returning her work laptop in a Gucci shopping bag so that her former employers don’t suspect she needed the cash.
TikTok user @champagneanddividends recently received more than one million views on a video posted earlier this month. In the clip, she films herself putting the grey MacBook laptop into the green Gucci shopping bag.
Over the clip, she wrote: “Sending my work laptop back in a Gucci bag after being made redundant so they don’t know I’m screwed without the job.”
She explained that the Gucci shopping bag came from a prize that her partner had won, but simply held onto the bag for future use.
“Stay classy friends,” she added over the video, and captioned the post: “Gotta do what you gotta do…onto bigger and better”
The “petty” move was praised by TikTok users who applauded the laid-off worker for putting on a brave face in front of her former employers. Some people believed she should’ve kept the laptop in retaliation, while other laid-off employees shared the subtle ways they got back at their job for letting them go.
“That’ll show em!!!!” commented one TikToker.
“I’d do this,” another said.
“Girl, my laptop would have ‘gone missing’ at that point. Oops sorry,” a third person wrote, to which the TikTok revealed that she offered to buy the MacBook but her former employer said no.
Another user shared, “They laid me off one time, I donate to that NGO every year so they don’t think I died because of loss of job.”
A recent wave of layoffs has affected dozens of US companies, most notably in the tech and journalism industries. In March, companies announced nearly 90,000 layoffs, a 15 per cent increase in just one month, according to CNBC. Within the last year, there have been more than 270,000 job cuts across the US, with the tech industry announcing 102,391 cuts so far in 2023.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has laid off thousands of workers over the last year. In November, Meta laid off more than 11,000 people – roughly accounting for 70 per cent of its staff. Just last month, the company announced another 10,000 layoffs affecting its recruiting and non-engineering teams.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has laid off nearly 10,000 employees responsible for the ethical and sustainable outcome of its artificial intelligence development. Amazon also laid off 9,000 staff in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) and human resources sectors last April.
Most recently, a former TikTok employee who was laid off by the company went viral on the app after filming a tour of the platform’s New York City office on her last day. In the clip, user Simona Ruzer jokingly invited followers to “come with [her] to steal company assets from TikTok” as she filmed her old office space.
She showed herself leaving her work laptop and ID behind for TikTok’s IT department, before revealing that she would be keeping her TikTok lanyard because she “deserves it” for working at the company for two and a half years.
“It’s the least they could give me,” she said.
