This Woman Was Degraded By A Man During A Business Meeting And People Are Praising Her For How She Handled The Situation
BuzzFeed
A woman named Sabrina Lassegue recently caught the attention of nearly 12 million people after she shared this video of an interaction she had with a man during a business meeting:
In the video, you hear Sabrina say to the man, "No. No...please keep yourself on mute. No, I'm actually not done speaking, so while I respect your ability to talk on and on, my ears actually do have a limit. I find it extremely disrespectful and degrading that you felt a need to not only interrupt my entire presentation, but also repeat back to me what I had just offered to the table."
@directedbybrini / tiktok.com
BuzzFeed spoke to 20-year-old Sabrina, who launched a production company called Yellow Rain Productions last August.
Sabrina told BuzzFeed that she had recently been hired by a brand to create a commercial for a feminine product, and her idea for the commercial had been approved. In the TikTok, she was presenting her idea to a company the brand uses for sales, marketing, etc. "It was important to me to highlight women in a positive light in the campaign. However, one of the men on the marketing team began to interrupt me over and over again, despite me stating I would take questions at the end," she said.
At first, Sabrina said that she was open to the man's comments because she believes in constructive criticism, but she quickly realized he had ulterior motives. "He claimed I didn’t understand the audience and attempted to tell me what women wanted to hear. He had his own agenda and wanted a chance to pitch himself to create a commercial for the brand. He began to shut down every idea I had without hearing them out or would take everything I had said previously and repeat it back as he stumbled his way through my original phrases."
After asking him twice to please wait to say comments or ask questions until the end of her presentation, another woman on the call reiterated Sabrina's request. "After that, he began stating, 'The problem with you women is...' I had already begun shutting down his comment when I took out my phone in hopes to catch anything else he would say," Sabrina explained.
"I didn’t share any of his sentences from before because I didn’t want to expose the company or the man himself. I simply wanted to share my experience and how I was able to turn the tables around in a professional manner. Many can argue that what they heard wasn’t professional, but anyone on that call who heard some of his previous statements would beg to differ," she added.
After the call, the man's boss apologized, and then the brand itself apologized to Sabrina. "By the next morning, they had seen my TikTok and were not upset at all. After seeing thousands of women share their stories in the comments, they removed him from this particular project. We are moving forward with me doing this campaign, and they allowed me to return to another Zoom call to present my campaign," she said.
Most of Sabrina's guy friends were not surprised by her experience at all — in fact, she said that the ones who work in marketing said they see it all the time.