Editor’s note: This article was originally published on May 14, 2023. It has since been updated.

The internet is rallying around the vice president of a recruiting and staffing agency after she spoke out about an incident at work. A group of men were caught arguing with each other about her appearance while she was on a business video call. Whitney Sharpe, 28, is headquartered in Boston and was not happy when the chat accidentally showed up on the screen. “If a supplier accidentally shares their Teams chat, it’s all nasty things about me. It’s 2023, can this stop.” she captioned the Tiktok video which has over 2 million views. Honestly, it’s the 21st century. How about some professionalism and work ethic for once?

Speaking to TODAY, Sharpe said the incident took place on January 24 during a business video meeting with potential clients. She explained that her role as vice president is to look for different vendors who can join her development teams. Sharpe was joined in the video meeting by three other men who were employees of the potential clients and she refrained from disclosing the name of the company the men work for. It should be noted that everyone on the call was notified of the recording before the meeting began, but in their home state of Massachusetts, it is illegal to record a call without permission.

“I was on a call to do a demo, and that software vendor accidentally shared their group chat with me instead of sharing the demo they were supposed to share,” she explains, adding, “The group chat said some pretty unkind things. about me and it just went from there. Aside from one of the messages calling Sharpe a “crushing bomb,” she declined to discuss other details of the chats. “They realized (what happened), I would say, maybe 30 seconds to a minute into the conversation,” she explains. “Certainly enough time to see it go back and forth.” Sharpe’s hands were shaking as she talked about wanting a female representative, but she handled it pretty well.

“My thoughts were saying, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, just get the words out,’” she explains. “I just concentrated on breathing in and saying the words clearly and calmly. I think as women in the workplace we are often labeled as emotional. I really didn’t want them to be able to tell that I was being emotional in my response. I certainly could have been much tougher on them. But if I had done that, they could have said I was ‘too emotional’ and I played on that, and I didn’t want that to be an excuse.” She waited 15 minutes to give everyone a chance. That dawned on me and then she said something. “Okay, first of all, if we continue to work together, I want to work with a female sales rep because I don’t want the locker room talking about myself when you’re sharing screens. she says in the video in which she responds to the inappropriate messages.

In response, one of the men can be heard saying the exchanges were “inexcusable,” before adding: “So apologies for that.” In another video, Sharpe shows us a photo of an apology letter sent by the company’s vice president. The prospect’s CEO reached out after 24 hours and formally apologized to Sharpe. “I thought that was a big deal and the CEO was on the phone with a lawyer and his head of HR,” she explains, saying what was said “didn’t feel genuine at all.” To this day, Sharpe has yet to receive a sincere apology from the three men on the phone call. “I really hope to work with some of these organizations like RAINN,” she notes, emphasizing that women are not the only victims of sexual harassment. “I really hope that I can speak to someone from RAINN and then from the EEOC, which protects workers in the United States, so that I can continue to educate myself and then use my platform to make sure I’m doing the right things I don’t want to ever give the wrong advice.”