Gen Z Employee Quits Job Via TikTok Before Informing Employer, Who Finds Out Via TikTok

Marketing associate Zara Chen, 23, resigned from her position at Meridian Consulting Group on Tuesday via a TikTok video that her employer discovered only after it appeared on the HR director's For You Page during an all-hands meeting about, ironically, employee retention. 'I was mid-slide about how we've really improved our workplace culture when my phone buzzed,' said HR director Patricia Meadows. 'It was a notification from TikTok. One of my employees, in our bathroom, lip-syncing to a sound called Corporate Girlie No More, with the caption: POV you just told your laptop you'll never see it again.' The video, posted during Chen's 11 AM bathroom break, features her performing a choreographed routine that includes removing her company lanyard in slow motion, dropping it in a trash can, and mouthing the words 'I am free' while a remixed version of Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' plays. The video had 4.2 million views by the time Meadows saw it. Chen had not yet informed any member of the company's management. 'I was going to tell them,' Chen said. 'But TikTok has a 24-hour algorithm window and I needed to post while the audio was trending. You can't time your resignation around HR. You have to time it around the algorithm.' Chen's follow-up video, titled 'Day 1 of unemployment: unhinged,' shows her eating cereal at 2 PM in a bathrobe. It has 6.8 million views. Meridian Consulting has since updated its employee handbook to require that 'all resignations be communicated to human resources before being communicated to the internet.' The policy has been posted to the company's internal Slack, which Chen has already left. She did, however, duet Meridian's corporate TikTok account with a video captioned 'no hard feelings bestie' that has outperformed every piece of content the company has ever produced.