Picked on, belittled: Ushna Shah recalls toxic work environment

The actor shared that a '42-year-old, white male head constantly made racist remarks' towards her

Ushna Shah has never been one to mince her words. The actor has always called spade a spade and her latest tweets are testimony to that. In a new thread, the Balaa star recalled her first job in Canada before she joined the Pakistani entertainment industry, highlight the toxic environment she had to work in.

"My first experience with workplace misogyny: I was an 18-year-old, fresh-out-of-high-school, summer intern as an admin assistant in an office in Vancouver before university,” Shah started off. "I learned fast, did my job well, impressed the head office in Toronto and was hired as a full-time replacement for the rest of summer to replace the HR head (a woman) who had resigned (due to office misogyny, I later found out)."

She added, “A 42-year-old, red-faced angry white male, head of accounts, made my life miserable. He constantly picked on me, belittled me, made racist remarks and used statements like ‘Don't ask her, she's just an assistant’ in front of clients."

Shah revealed that the bullying got to a point where she would "hold back tears on the commute home and dread going to work in the morning." She said, "The relentless bullying made no sense and one day, after bring provoked in a meeting in which he was (very vocal) of the opinion that I had no place being, I snapped"

The starlet then put her superior in his place. "'You're just angry because if I stick around, I'll have your job in less than two years, Andrew,” she told him.

This did the trick. "He left no chance to bully and intimidate me. Thankfully, I left to start freshman year but it wasn't until years later, in retrospect, that I realised this man had an issue with a woman - a young woman, a young, brown woman - climbing the corporate ladder in a position close to his (which took him over a decade to get to), based solely on her management skills and ability to adapt and learn quickly at a speed he couldn't fathom."

"This was my first experience," Shah went on. "Tip of the iceberg. Before I even joined the media industry."

However, she agreed that misogyny at isn't limited to just one profession. Putting it aptly, Shah remarked, "In conclusion, it is a battle for women regardless of the line of work we are in."

In conclusion, she asked her fans and followers to share their own experiences with workplace misogyny. "Your turn! Share your experience(s) with workplace misogyny. Also, if you're reading this, thank you for such valuable lessons, Andrew. I was wrong about the two-year thing. Had I stuck around I'd have had your job in six months," Shah wrote.