vivi ✨ · @vivisquid
9th Aug 2021 from TwitLonger
My Experience Working at Scuf Gaming for 2+ Years
TW Sexual Harassment/Rape Comments
I always contemplate speaking about my experience with Scuf, because I have numerous mutuals that purchase items from the company. I also have mutuals that are sponsored by the company.
I'm incredibly bitter towards the community, but I won't fault you for supporting them if you don't even know what kind of company they are.
I am still under an NDA obligation with the company, so I cannot/will not speak on how the actual company operates, but I am under no contractual obligation to keep my personal experiences with other employees a secret.
I don't want to go too much into depth because I don't want to cry over this again, so here is a list of all of my abusers and incidents that happened while working for Scuf.
#1. Dee
• Resented me for "intruding on a workplace that was safe for men".
(I started as QA Tester for Scuf's controllers btw.)
I literally never interacted with him, but he made work more difficult for me because he actually despised me.
• One day, he snapped and threw a controller at me. My two work best friends rushed to my side, and one basically body blocked me to protect me if he tried to throw another. The other friend stopped him in his tracks and told him to back off. Dee told them not to protect me and let me take care of myself because he was sick of me working in the same space as him.
#2. Avery
• Gossiped WITH MY BOSSES about who was going to be able to fuck me first/how they thought I was going to be easy.
• He would constantly get touchy with me when I asked my coworkers questions since I was new.
(he'd hold my hands/rub my back while explaining)
• He was persistent about spending time with me outside of work and I politely declined for weeks and he refused to take the hint.
• He would visibly check me out and comment on how big my ass was getting because I was gaining weight, and stated he liked "thiccer women."
• It wasn't until I aggressively showed disinterest in spending time with him, did he stop asking me out/flirting with me.
• He then started talking badly about me at work, saying I had an ego and I was an "ugly bitch with a bad attitude and that absolutely no one would want to rape me"
#3. Robert/Christian: My bosses at the company when I was a tester.
• Gossiped with my coworkers about me.
• They demanded that I confided in them instead of ever going to HR.
• I made the mistake of confiding in them, and they said I was being too sensitive and that their only other sensitive employee was also a girl, so maybe girls were just sensitive. (I was the second girl to ever work there btw)
• Went to HR about the issues I was having with Avery and once our HR lady talked to them about it, they turned around and yelled at me for making things difficult in their department.
[[[ Oh and guess how HR handled Avery's comments towards me? Sat us down in her office and "made us talk it out", I refused to speak to him and she said I was making it difficult for her to resolve the issue. ]]]
#4. Jakob: mega flirty with every girl at work.
As a woman in a male-dominated workplace, you become numb to things like this and just ignore it.
We were acquaintances and I didn't hate him at all, at first. After working together for about a year, he asked me on a date and I politely declined.
• He flipped it to "oh, I wasn't actually asking you out, I just wanted to hook up. but whatever." and he started being super cold towards me at work.
Come 2019 work Christmas party, I'm hanging out with my friends and couldn't drink alcohol with any of them because I had just gone to the ER that morning for a kidney infection, but I didn't want to miss the party because they gave me tons of free money away.
https://twitter.com/vivisquid/status/1208298794804224000?s=20
• A few hours into the party, I'm standing alone while watching people drunk dancing, and he walks over to me, is visibly drunk and slurs to me that he misses how we used to be friendly with each other and then LITERALLY gropes one of my tits, notices that I'm absolutely appalled, laughs about it and walked away.
#5. Jay:
• sexually harassed multiple women in our department (very touchy)
• sent me articles on how to lose weight (with no context btw)
• would purposefully take his break/lunch at the same time I did and make it incredibly awkward, so I would end my breaks early.
• would wait for me in the work parking lot even though he got out 30 minutes before me
• would always eavesdrop on the conversations I was having across the room with other people, and then would message me about it.
Reported all this shit to my lead and manager immediately, nothing happened.
Vent tweeted about how a creep at work was making me miserable and I wish he'd just kick rocks and disappear.
The dude followed me on a Twitter account he made for his 4-year-old daughter.
How'd he find out my Twitter handle that I kept a secret? He went into my cubicle when I took a short bathroom break and he got on Twitter on my phone and saw my Twitter profile.
He reported my tweet to HR and said he was fearful for his life. And I lost my stable job in May 2020, at the literal start of our pandemic :)
And was denied unemployment even though I couldn't find another well-paying job for 5 months, during covid's peak btw.
I know that there are still numerous abusive people that continue to work at Scuf Gaming.
(there's rampant racism, including from HR, but that's a story for a different day)
But these were *my* abusers.
I reported every incident as they happened, and I was told by HR and my bosses that I was being sensitive or misunderstanding the situation at hand.
I was an incredibly hard worker my entire time there. I pent up my feelings and would cry my eyes out in my car during my lunch break. And then I'd suck it back up and continue to be an excellent worker because I had bills that needed to be paid.
It's been over a year and my feelings are still incredibly hurt over the entire experience. I always voiced my experiences at work and was always painted out to be the aggressor because I had incidents with multiple people, that I looked like the problem.
I was so excited to have a job for a popular gaming company, but if I could take back those two years of experience, I would. The pay was really good, but I was incredibly suicidal my entire time there.
If it were not for my partner unknowingly always being there when I needed someone to talk to, I would absolutely have ended my life due to the distress that I had to endure. I wish I never experienced any of this.
It's not just Activision-Blizzard, it happens everywhere.