A St. Petersburg clothing brand fired an employee who missed work after her grandfather’s death, then accused her of orchestrating a harassment campaign

Tamara, an employee of the St. Petersburg clothing brand OldBaby Shop (also known as “Samost,” Russian for “Selfhood”), said on Threads that she was fired after missing work because of her grandfather’s death. Her thread went viral, drawing almost 7,000 likes and about 2,000 comments in two days. Her employer came under a barrage of criticism, and the brand’s owners then accused their former employee of inciting a harassment campaign against them.

Tamara said she had worked at the brand’s store for almost a year and had been a responsible employee who never skipped a shift or called in sick. “They thought I was their best employee. They adored me,” she said. “I was a special kind of zoomer — a responsible one. I never once skipped a shift, never once got sick, never complained about anything. I worked through illness. I did my job.”

On August 13, Tamara learned that her grandfather, who had been ill with cancer for a long time, had died. She told her employer that same day that she wouldn’t be coming in because she had to help her mother arrange the funeral. Her shift partner — the store employed just two women — couldn’t cover for her. Tamara said she asked for only one day off, even though the law entitled her to five days of bereavement leave. For the remaining days, including the day of the funeral, she managed to swap shifts with a colleague.

In workplace messages Tamara made public, a brand representative tried to find out why she wouldn’t be coming in — whether the funeral was scheduled for that day, or whether she couldn’t cope with the news “psychologically.” “If it’s psychological, come in — your grandfather would definitely want you to be responsible,” the message read. Tamara was also accused of “letting down” her employer by choosing her mother over work, and of keeping her mother from “growing up” by helping her arrange the funeral. She was then told she was being fired — and called an “infantile zoomer.”

According to screenshots from the work chat, Anna, the brand’s founder, never responded to Tamara’s messages about her family situation or her need for a day off. It was Anna’s husband, Ivan, who handled the correspondence. “Screenshots of my messages with the so-called boss of this establishment (his name isn’t on any of the paperwork — he’s just the husband of the woman who owns this sole proprietorship, and he has a god complex),” Tamara wrote of him on Threads.

Once the story broke, social media users rallied behind Tamara and turned on OldBaby Shop’s owners. Negative comments began appearing on the brand’s accounts, and users drove down the store’s rating on the mapping service 2GIS. The owners renamed their Instagram account “Samost” and deleted their replies to Tamara’s thread.

Anna also recorded a reel in which she said she’d had to cover Tamara’s shift at the store and then sew customer orders on top of it. “I have to sew three or four items a day to keep up with orders,” she said. “Yesterday I went tearing over to the store to cover for her. I got home at 10 p.m., and I didn’t sleep. I’ve been sitting here sewing orders for more than 24 hours because I can’t tell people their wedding dress isn’t going to arrive.”

The video is no longer available, but copies of it have been saved on social media.

In another reel, Ivan and Anna said Tamara was fired not because her grandfather had died but because they no longer trusted her. “I understand this is a rage-bait headline: ‘A person was fired because her grandfather died,’” Anna said in the video. “The person was fired because she thinks we’re wannabe bosses and hucksters who make money off rags. I don’t know how to keep working with this person. If I broke any rules, I really do want to pay the fine to the labor inspectorate — and if Toma [Tamara] needs money, to pay her for those five days. But I don’t see how I can trust her anymore.”

Anna complained that she had put her whole life into the business and that people cared more about her former employee’s feelings than about her company. Ivan said the business was almost destroyed and that Tamara had allegedly harassed her former employers online.

“Nobody has ever come after us the way Toma has,” Ivan said. “Our entire 15-year business is in ruins, all our cards canceled, our accounts hacked, our bank accounts blocked. Hundreds of millions in losses, all because we unlawfully fired an employee. Do you think that’s fair? You call yourselves such an enlightened society, yet you destroy people for doing something wrong?” For their part, he said, they “aren’t going to do anything.”

In the brand’s Instagram Stories, Ivan also wrote that he was worried about his wife: “She said she’s finished, that there’s no point in living. It scares me.” Threads users called this manipulative.