‘I ended up getting demoted’: Ex-Sephora worker says manager retaliated after she called out ‘unprofessional’ and ‘disgusting’ behavior
A TikTok user and former retail employee continues her series on surviving retail jobs with a story about how she left Sephora, in which she alleges that her manager retaliated after she called out “unprofessional” and “disgusting” behavior.
Ex-Sephora operations manager Kenya Broadnax (@kbmakeupme24) shares her story in a post that has amassed more than 1.1 million views since it was posted on July 10. “A few days ago in my comments, somebody asked me, ‘Hey how did everything end at a certain place you worked?’ Let me tell you,” she says.
@kbmakeupme24 I’ll do the orange store next ???? #greenscreen #foryourpage #foryoupage #fyp #viral #survivingretailjobs #sephora #retail #retailproblems ##retailproblem##retailworker##retailworkerproblems ♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey
Broadnax reveals that she worked at Sephora in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. in 2015. Initially, she worked in skin care, but took an interest in operations. The worker was eventually asked by her store manager—who she describes as a “terrible person”—if she would like to take the operations manager position.
Broadnax accepted. The only problem was that Broadnax’s manager apparently failed to tell the current operations manager that she would be receiving a demotion.
“This girl came in completely blindsided and had no idea she was about to be demoted from her job,” Kenya recalls. "And what did my store manager do? She literally started talking crap about her to the whole entire management team, saying how she was lazy, how she wasn’t good at her job, how she wasn’t built for her job.”
The ex-Sephora worker says that wasn't the end of her run-ins with this manager. She alleges that after the demotion incident, the store began to experience issues with cleanliness as well as rampant theft. Kenya also claims this manager was previously reprimanded for instances of “racism and using the n-word.”
Eventually, Kenya’s dissatisfaction was relayed to the store manager herself, who called Kenya into the office for a discussion.
Kenya says, “So when she called me in the office, this is how that conversation went: She said, ‘I’ve been told by a lot of people that you don’t like working with me and that you don’t like me and quite frankly I just need to understand why.’"
The ex-Sephora worker says she didn't hold back. "I said, ‘You’re absolutely right. I don’t like you. I think you’re unprofessional, I think you’re rude. I think you’re disrespectful. The way that you speak to your associates is disgusting. You literally refer to your associates as bitches. You come in here, you have inappropriate ‘seggsual’ conversations, it’s disgusting.’”
After this interaction, Kenya says, "I ended up getting demoted."
“I went cleaned out my locker and resigned. Complained to corporate. And then she made me non re-hirable in the system so I could never work for Sephora again.”
In the comments, retail workers weighed in with their own experiences.
“LOL this is so real. They made me non rehire-able at MAC so solidarity,” wrote one user.
A second user spoke up in solidarity, saying, “That no-hire status club!!”
Kenya has previously discussed experiences working for Forever 21 and Ulta, and when a user asked, “If you had to choose ONE, which was worse to work for? Sephora or Ulta?” Kenya replied, “Definitely Ulta.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Kenya via TikTok DM and Sephora via email for comment.
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