A woman captured the moment she was laid off by Amazon in a Wes Anderson-style clip — as a part of the burgeoning TikTok trend
- Jennifer Lucas said she realized she'd been laid off from Amazon while filming a TikTok.
- The video, a Wes-Anderson-style WFH montage, showed her opening her email and covering her mouth.
Jennifer Lucas caught the unfortunate moment she was laid off during a playful day-in-the-life Wes Anderson-inspired TikTok.
Lucas, who up until recently worked as an Amazon Web Services recruiting manager, was taking part in a recent TikTok trend — the romanticizing of mundane moments by mimicking Anderson's film style. Lucas had already created a few versions when she filmed her April 26 video.
"I was trying to film a cute Wes Anderson style WFH and accidentally filmed myself getting laid off??!" the clip is caption. The bouncy, upbeat soundtrack of Anderson's 2021 film "The French Dispatch" played.
After stylized clips of Lucas making coffee, brushing her teeth, and signing on to work, a sideways view of her covering her mouth with a hand was accompanied by the on-screen text: "opening the email in real-time." Lucas finished the video with clips from a "mental health walk" outside. She did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In a video later that day, Lucas said she was "really surprised" by the decision and noted that, while she knew it wasn't personal, she still felt discomfort telling others what happened. "But, that is life — and I am human," she said. "This does not make me any less amazing or valuable or smart."
"This is actually the MOST accurate Wes Anderson video I've seen, utter aesthetic tragedy," one viewer wrote. Lucas replied: "Feeling like an utter aesthetic train wreck today."
"This is millennial core rn," another commented. "Wes Anderson and everyone getting laid off."
On April 24, Amazon Web Services began letting employees go as part of the company's plan to cut 9,000 workers in addition to the 18,000 employees the company laid off earlier this year, as Insider's Ashley Stewart previously reported.
In March, Insider's Juliana Kaplan and Madison Hoff noted that, while it's true that thousands of people were laid off in the US, the layoffs and discharges rate remained very low historically. But since highly visible companies, such as Amazon, have conducted layoffs and similar companies followed suit, it can feel like layoffs are everywhere. Tech, which has seen an uptick in layoffs, is "prominent in some communities," Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, previously told Insider, but is still a technically "small part of the overall economy."
On April 27, Lucas told viewers she had felt "so embarrassed" to disclose that she'd been laid off, but the online response had left her "speechless." She thanked TikTokers for their kind comments and job leads.
"I recognize that that is a very unique experience," Lucas, whose video was viewed more than 5.9 million times, said, "and people going through this probably aren't experiencing that. So, if you were impacted in the layoffs yesterday — or just at all this year," she said, "I hope you don't feel alone. I hope you don't feel embarrassed, I hope you know this does not define you."