College student, Tony Piloseno, used TikTok to create a wildly successful account while away at school and used it as part of a digital marketing pitch to the paint company Sherwin-Willians. While this sounds incredibly impressive to most, the company instead, fired him. You read that correctly. He took initiative, built a case study, and instead of praising him and giving him a better job, they gave him the ax.

The goal Piloseno, a senior at Ohio University was to appeal to younger members of Gen Z, according to BuzzFeed News, and we'd say that he most definitely accomplished that. While in school full time, he worked a part-time job at a local Sherwin-Williams store. After the company discovered his incredibly popular TikTok paint-mixing channel @tonesterpaints, which currently has over 1.2 million followers, they let him go.

The interesting twist that for months now, Piloseno has worked really hard to build this now viral account to show them what is possible if they use the power of social media to appeal to a younger audience. The possibilities are truly endless.

Instead of praising him and using this as a case study, the company started a corporate investigation of his social media account. They ended up determining that he was making "these videos during [his] working hours" and with company equipment.

BuzzFeed News was given a copy of the termination papers by Piloseno and the official offense given to him was "gross misconduct," which included the offenses of "wasting properties [and] facilities," and "seriously embarrass[ing] the Company or its products."

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After the story was originally published, the paint company came forward and said it had something to do with a customer complaint. However, Piloseno has told BuzzFeed News that whenever he first started his account back in December 2019, he did film while mixing paint for customers, but since then, he has been purchasing the paint using his employee discount.

"They first accused me of stealing — I told them I purchased all my paint," he said. "They made me answer a bunch of questions like when I was doing this, where, if there was anyone in the store while I was doing [filming]. There was never anyone with me while I doing it."

Since being fired, his account has been flooded with so many people outraged that Sherwin-Williams would do this to someone who has been with the company for three years and was helping to expand their customer base.

Sherwin-Williams did finally respond. Julie Young, the vice president of global corporate communications shared with BuzzFeed News that, "While we don’t discuss the details of employee matters publicly, what I can tell you is that we were made aware of the TikTok videos produced by Anthony Piloseno through a customer complaint. We take all complaints seriously and thoroughly investigated the customer’s concerns. Following the investigation, Mr. Piloseno was let go in July 2020 due to multiple Company policy violations."

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Sources: BuzzFeed News, TikTok