Toxic workplaces are all too common, but after seeing a TikTok posted by a company she happened to have just interviewed at, Eve, who posts under Admin & Eve (@adminandeve), called out both the company and its CEO in a now-viral TikTok.
@adminandeve Not gonna name the company but I’m sure you can find it. Don’t fall for garbage like this during interviews. #worktok #corporate #careertiktok #careeradvice #interviewtips #resumetips #adminandeve ♬ original sound – Admin & Eve | Career Mentor
The original post, viewed over 700,000 times, follows the video’s host as he walks around his office asking colleagues whether they want to take on a few hours of extra work or “double it and give it to someone else.” The offer begins with an extra two hours and builds up to 16 hours when the CEO of the company accepts it. He also asks the host, an employee, to point out colleagues who didn’t agree to pick up the extra hours. The host refuses to call out his co-workers by name.
Eve then jumps in and introduces herself as the “angel of death for toxic companies” and alleges she was already blocked by the company after she publicly spoke about her own experience of the interview process with them.
Eve addresses the CEO, Sherveen Mashayekhi. According to his TikTok bio and LinkedIn, Mashayekhi is the founder and CEO of Free Agency.
“The way that you workhorse and police your company and frankly run it, it makes you so out of touch and unrelatable that I think people are seeing that in your content,” she says.
The TikToker says she knows the post wasn’t the joke it was being made out to be because she interviewed at the company, and her interviewer mentioned the CEO often liked to give his employees extra projects “to test how hard they could work in a short amount of time.”
“But the thing is these projects had nothing to do with their jobs … and [were] supposed to be done off the clock,” Eve alleges. Eve also says the interviewer told her, “We’re trying to have people not be so defensive about their weekends here” and that workers were expected to work during their off hours. “Red flag number one,” Eve says.
During her face-to-face with the CEO, Mashayekhi, Eve says she asked about the company’s work/life balance, to which Mashayekhi allegedly responded: “’Work/life balance is earned when people build a company and sacrifice their time and lives up front to EARN it later.’” She says Mashayekhi also told her, “I directly correlate the amount of hours somebody spends here with how hard they work” and that if she was only working eight or nine hours, he would assume she wasn’t a hard worker.
The post received 710,00 views and even reached Mashayekhi, who expressed his thoughts in the comments.
“Oof. Eve, I get you have a POV, but getting personal without reaching out to understand & clarify…there’s a lot here that just isn’t true,” Mashayekhi wrote, to which Eve responded with a second video in which she doubled down on her remarks about the company being toxic and said that she was only quoting him and his employees in her video.
Eve also said in the comments of her original video that “multiple former employees have reached out and praised me for bringing this to light.” In a third update post, she also says that “apparently 14 people left in the past two months” and that all the former employees who reached out to her back up “100% everything I said.”
“The fact that the CEO is in the comments arguing tells everyone everything they need to know,” observed one viewer of the original post.
A number of workers in the comments also made their case for Eve to take on their toxic company next. “Can you do my company it’s absolutely shambolic and needs attention…no seriously,” one person said.
“Can we submit companies for you to flame,” another asked.
“Honestly, this might become my new thing. Yes, please! Send me a detailed email and I’ll try to collect more evidence!!” Eve responded.
The Daily Dot reached out to Eve and Mashayekhi via email.
