Woman Chronicles Layoff Anxiety During Eight-Hour Company-Wide Firing

Layoff anxiety is no joke. With firings occurring left and right, workers often worry about where their next paycheck will come from if they fall victim to a company-wide layoff spree.

And one TikTok creator documented what it feels like to face an entire day of uncertainty when her employer revealed that 10 percent of her coworkers — possibly including herself — would lose their jobs within eight hours. Here’s what happened.

In her viral video, @nat__tucker (Nat Tucker) chronicled a day in her life when she feared her company would fire her. The creator prefaced that she works at an advertising/marketing agency in New York and received an alarming email from her employer essentially stating that they planned to layoff 10 percent of the company's workers that day. According to the email, if you didn’t hear anything by 5 p.m. EST, you were “in the clear.”

Nat also said the email arrived in her inbox at 8:30 a.m. and that her employer said there would be a company-wide meeting at 5:30 p.m.

When the creator recorded her first clip, she mentioned that it was only 11 a.m. and that she needed to wait six more hours to find out if she could keep her job.

Nat also explained how anxiety-inducing it was to receive notifications on her laptop because she worried it would contain the dreaded one-on-one layoff meeting.

And despite her recent promotion, the creator admitted that she knew the least out of everyone with a similar title — meaning that she could be one of the first to go.

“I kind of just wanted to make this to keep track of what’s going on and also post about it because this is something that’s happening to a lot of people,” Nat said of her reasoning for creating a TikTok about the situation. “I know a lot of people are getting laid off.”

Throughout her nearly five-minute video, Nat shared a few ways she dealt with the stress of a potential firing. From cutting her nails to prevent biting to calling her father to cleaning the house while blasting music, the creator tried everything she could to get her mind off the impending doom.

And to ensure that she would have leads elsewhere, Nat spent some time replying to recruiters about other job opportunities. “I’m still very anxious, but I’m trying to control what I can,” the creator admitted.

Around 4:30 p.m., Nat took to TikTok to offer another update about the situation. While she was journaling, the creator realized she was most likely going to keep her job.

Then, at 5:30 p.m., Nat joined the company-wide meeting and officially knew she avoided the layoffs. In her caption, the creator expressed her gratitude about remaining employed but noted that her company’s approach was tremendously stressful.

“I’m still employed, thankfully,” Nat shared. “But the uncertainty is hard to deal with.”

And one user in the comment section couldn’t have agreed more. “This is such a messed up way to go about this,” they wrote. “Companies need to do better.”