The Julia Shoffner Story And The Impossible Task Of Finding Capable Social Media People
It happened again. This time, I won’t let it go unanswered. You’re not going to disparage my name and this company’s reputation without hearing my side of the story. Today I was called something I’ve never been called before in my life and it needs to be addressed. Frankly, it hurt because everything I do is to strive toward being better than the average business owner. Today, I will be sharing the Julia Shoffner story and the ongoing search for a capable social media person (Kyle has done a great job with Instagram and none of this has anything to do with him. Keep it going, Kyle!).
Nope. Not going to happen. Before I even begin any further, let’s get one thing out of the way. I hope this is a learning lesson for Julia. If you stink at your job, don’t make untrue accusations to justify your actions. That will never end well.
I wish I didn’t have to be in this position but I’m also not going to let my name or company’s reputation be attacked by one bad egg. Truly, I don’t even want to write this blog, but feel as if there is no other alternative. Don’t ever accuse me or this company of being misogynistic with zero supporting evidence.
The bottom line is I give people too many chances. Julia should have been fired a long time ago. This is what her timesheet looks like. The next example will reference the timesheet of James Herrick who actually does work.
You see, here are two examples of timesheets. One person actually does work for the site. The other person made up numbers to suggest they were working. Take a wild guess which timesheet Julia turned in… James Herrick actually puts in work and provided links to his progress.
For five consecutive weeks, Julia ignored the company standard for how to turn in timesheets but was given another chance anyway because Trey is a nice guy. Julia decided to follow up that generous act by going on a camping trip without informing me, leaving the Twitter account on hiatus for over 48 hours, suggesting she “doesn’t care”, and then accused me of being misogynistic with zero supporting evidence.
It’s obvious that Julia’s actions show a level of immaturity for someone that isn’t ready for a real-world workplace. However, it doesn’t excuse her actions for calling me or this company misogynistic.
The truth of the matter is every single leadership position in this company not named Trey is female-run. Merch Store? Female. Lead video editor? Female. Lead audio engineer? Female. Lead social media person? Female. Lead web developer? Also female. Lead graphics? Also female.
Our team page reflects those views as I pride myself on giving important positions of leadership to the incredible women at this company.
I will not ever let this sort of accusation go unanswered. I pride myself on being an equal opportunity employer and am so proud of the female presence at this company. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Vendetta will always pride itself on that for as long as I’m in charge.
A smaller note, throwing Max Everett or any employee under the bus is totally unfair. What people should realize is that in a remote internship setting, COMMUNICATING is quite literally the only requirement for not losing your job. If Julia did her job, Max wouldn’t have offered to help out in the social media department, to begin with. Max was hired to help with the gaming team, not social media. You can’t go camping with no phone service and not tell the boss about it. Nobody is keeping their job if they do that in any work setting.
I’m not here to disparage Julia or suggest she’s stupid in any way. However, I will defend myself when it comes to that sort of allegation. It’s evident that her actions were unjustified and resorted to ridiculous allegations when she couldn’t defend her work ethic.
Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe it’s too difficult to find someone to simply copy and paste a headline to a Twitter account. Frankly, I just don’t understand how it’s so difficult to find a social media person. It turns out that you actually have to put more work into running a professional social media account instead of trying to figure out which filter looks best on a sorority group photo. I could take it a step further but I’ll take the high ground here because I would never make false allegations about someone. I only speak the truth even if I’m better off lying. Her work ethic was shit and the timesheets, communication, and productivity reflected that was the case.
Maybe I shouldn’t take this too personally, but I do. People can call me whatever they want but I genuinely do try to be a good person. I take this so personally and never want to be accused of being misogynistic in any form or fashion. I hope Aarav isn’t upset by using this screenshot but it’s not surprising to hear he tried to help her with Tik Tok and was totally ignored. But maybe that was the kind of person Julia was. Maybe she did as little as possible while trying to just get the hours done and pass the internship. I can’t speak for her but her actions would suggest that’s likely the case.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to find a good social media person. I really don’t. Probably because it takes actual work. Maybe one day we will have one. My original message stays the same. I’m so concerned for the future of our society. They expect to be handed everything without doing any actual work.
I have no ill will towards Julia Shoffner but I will not let this accusation go unanswered. Don’t accuse me of that word because all I have ever done is try to create an equal opportunity work environment here. I can’t say the same for other sports networks. Again, I hope this is a learning lesson for Julia. Throwing serious life-changing accusations like that with zero supporting evidence will never be acceptable and I hope every person that views content on this site knows my heart is in the right place providing all people opportunities.
