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Being a woman in a male-dominated field can be tough, but one woman just showed us all how to remain professional, even when working with guys who don’t. Whitney Sharpe, a recruiting and staffing specialist, was on a Zoom call last week with potential clients when they accidentally shared a screen they didn’t mean to. It showed messages in Microsoft Teams between the three potential clients - who are all male - talking about her in an “uncomfortable way.”
Sharpe didn’t feel comfortable sharing the details of the messages, but she calls them “locker room talk” and says one message called her a “f-ing bombshell.” After their 15-minute Zoom ended, she called them out over it and recorded herself doing it, then shared it on TikTok. In the clip, she tells the guys that IF they’re going to continue working together, she wants to work with a woman sales rep because she doesn’t “want to have to see locker room talk about myself when you’re sharing screens.”
While she appears calm and professional in the video, Sharpe admits calling the guys out was ‘nerve-wracking.” She saw the messages at the beginning of her meeting, but tried not to react, as she says, “The last thing I wanted them to be able to say is that I’m just emotional.” In the video, one of the men says it as an “inexcusable mistake” that shouldn’t have happened. And a few days later, the CEO of the potential clients’ company called her to apologize, but Sharpe felt like it was “cold” and “didn’t feel sincere.” And she still hasn’t gotten an apology from any of the men sharing messages about her.