A young woman was the only junior at a work dinner when a man put his hand over her mouth to stop her from speaking.
That was when she knew it was time to quit.
Chloe Baradinsky is a successful social media creator in Australia and is known for sharing glimpses into her corporate life.
She’s gone viral multiple times for sharing how she works 12-hour days, first at her 9-5 job and then at her robe business, K-Juliet.
The 30-year-old quit her lucrative corporate job in December after 18 months at the company because she felt isolated and unsupported.
When she left, she claims she was offered a significant sum to refrain from speaking about her experience, but Chloe didn’t want her former employers to have any “further control” over her, so she turned down the offer.
Instead, she went to TikTok, where she’s amassed over 10 million likes and 90,000 followers, and spoke about her experience.
“I did not take the hush money for a reason, so let’s start yapping,” she said.
Chloe, who did not name her old company, said that the work situation really impacted her mental health and several things contributed to her wanting to leave.
There were things like not receiving any positive feedback on her work and being reprimanded for working on her own business, even though she was doing it outside of office hours.
There were also bigger things like attending a work dinner where the man beside her kept “touching her” all night, making her feel humiliated and uncomfortable.
“There was a male there, sitting next to me. He was super touchy with me and kept touching my hair and shoulders constantly. Every time I went to talk he would cover my mouth with his hands, which happened multiple times,” she said.
Chloe recalled that, at some point, someone said, “Hey mate, stop it,” but the next day, said no one pulled the man aside and told him his behavior was inappropriate, nor did anyone check in with her.
“It was that moment that I realized we aren’t really a team and no one is looking out for me,” she said.
The 30-year-old knows some people might think that she should have told the man at the dinner to stop touching her, but she said the experience was so upsetting that she didn’t have the confidence to respond.
“You’re the only junior female, you’re embarrassed, you’re degraded, and you don’t feel like you have the confidence to say anything,” she told news.com.au.
“I expected my team to stick up for me.”
She said the environment outside of that incident was just too hard to thrive in. She struggled with not getting any positive feedback, her confidence suffered, and as a result, her performance at work began to dip.
“I just felt like I was giving it my all and clearly no one gives a sh*t about you, and I was like, ‘what is the point of putting so much emotional energy into this job?’” Chloe said.
It got to the point where she was crying in the bathrooms every day at work and felt like no matter how much she tried to be positive when coming into the office, she’d just end up getting “shot down” and be in tears at some point.
The worker claimed that, at one point, she was “bawling” her eyes out to a manager, but they never followed up with her.
Chloe believes that, if you’re a manager, it is your job to make sure your team is “comfortable, supported, and happy.”
In the end, she had a meeting at work where she said she felt like the “culture would never change,” to which she alleges another person in the meeting said, “This team will never change,” so she got up, left, and quit her job.
Since quitting in December, Chloe has struggled with a loss of identity because work has always been such a huge part of who she is.
“You climb the corporate ladder because you want to feel like you’ve achieved something and you’ve got nothing to show for it,” she said.
She’s found it hard to adjust because she knows that speaking out about her experience might also make her unemployable.
“Trying to get another job after what I’ve said is going to be difficult,” she said.
“I’m well aware of that, and it is something I had to understand before I said what I did because no one will touch me with a 10-foot pole now, but I wasn’t going to sit there and lie.”
The Sydney local said she’s proud of herself for speaking her truth but the flip side might be that she won’t get a traditional corporate “job again.”
So, she’s pivoted. Instead of treating her robe business, K-Juliet, like a side hustle, she’s leaned into doing it full-time.
Although it is a risk, Chloe is really “proud” of the work she’s doing and enjoying the freedom that comes with it.
She loves that the robes are the perfect summer throw-on, and she’s proud of the product and the designs.
However, she also loves being her own boss.
“You don’t have someone else guiding your vision, I don’t have a boss to say, ‘I think we should do it this way’. I can do it how I want,” she explained.
