Young Aussie lifts the lid on the trauma of working in a corporate office

A young Australian woman has taken to social media to complain about the treatment she experienced while working in corporate offices.

Sydney influencer Chloe Baradinsky said in the video on TikTok that she made a “trauma salad corporate edition” by dumping various sweet treats into a bowl while listing her negative experiences.

“I was told by an industry man that I was only hired because I checked two diversity boxes: I’m a woman and I’m Asian,” Ms. Baradinsky began.

Ms Baradinsky, who works in the financial sector, said a male colleague was “super handsy” with her at a work dinner before covering her mouth with his hand every time she went to speak to silence her.

“I was yelled at for not working hard enough, even though I had been working until 9pm every night for the past few weeks and weekends,” she continued.

“I was at an industry event and a guy said to my old boss, we all know why you hired her, because of her looks.

“One time I was vomiting all day from food poisoning and my boss gave me an early 5:30 p.m. Or the time a boss asked me out to dinner on Valentine’s Day.’

She ended the video by describing an incident where she had pneumonia and her team “didn’t believe I was sick enough not to work,” so she dragged herself out of bed “for the first time in a week” and went to office.

Commenters on the video were largely supportive of Ms. Baradinsky, with some calling corporate workplaces “toxic” and saying “this is why we need unions.”

‘I once worked at a company where my boss told me my main job was to make sure there was a banana on her desk every morning. That was actually not part of my job at all,’ says someone.

‘I worked for a global IT company in Sydney and I can tell you I have millions of stories like this. I quit after five years and never looked back,” said another.

‘This is grim. I hope these are all previous employment situations,” a third added.

Other commentators, however, said Ms. Baradinsky was being overly dramatic.

“You are ridiculous to call this a trauma,” one said.

“What’s the other option, make sure everyone social distances from you and treat you like a disease in case you get offended,” said another.

Ms. Baradinsky, who left the industry to start her own clothing company K. Juliaposted another video where she delved deeper into her business woes.

Workplace platform WorkL this week released a list of the world’s happiest companies to work for, based on more than a million surveys completed by users (pictured, Sydney’s CBD)

She said that after the dinner where her male colleague was “super helpful,” no one on her team called him the next day or checked to see if everything was okay.

‘I’m not a sensitive person. I want to make that clear. I’m not sensitive. You’re in a work environment, you already feel stupid because you’re young, you’re the only woman there, you’re the youngest. I expect my team to stand up for me. “I would expect my manager to say something to that person the next day,” she said.

“My performance from the beginning of last year to the end of last year was very different.”

Ms Baradinsky said her self-confidence had dropped as a result of her treatment at work and she had frequently cried in the bathroom.

‘I’m very capable. “I’m not an idiot, even though I’ve been told to a greater or lesser extent that I am,” she explained.

‘I was shouted at by someone on the team. I’ve never been spoken to like that before. He said, you shouldn’t take lunch breaks. You don’t work hard enough. I worked until 9 or 10 every evening and on weekends. When I work long hours, I expect flexibility in return. There was no flexibility.”

Ms. Baradinsky said she eventually had a confrontation with senior staff members.

‘I snapped and said, ‘You saw me bawling my eyes out and no one did anything about it’ and the senior person said, ‘I asked other people how to deal with it.’ This is a senior person who needs to know how to manage his own staff.

‘I said I know nothing will change and there was a silence and then someone says, “This team will never change”, so there you go. I got up and left and never spoke to anyone on that team again. There’s a lot more to it for another video,” she said.

Workplace platform WorkL on Tuesday released a list of the happiest companies in the world to work for, based on more than a million user-completed surveys.

In Australia, Bunnings, MECCA, CommBank, the Queensland Government and Google topped the list.