Popular television actress Ushna Shah has opened up about working in a toxic environment. The ‘Bandhay Ek Dour Se’ star recalled her first job in Canada before she joined Pakistan’s showbiz industry and highlighted the toxic environment she had to work in. 

Taking to Twitter, Ushna wrote: “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. 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).”

https://twitter.com/ushnashah/status/1297752516361441280

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.”

https://twitter.com/ushnashah/status/1297752517955194880

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. 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.”

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."

https://twitter.com/ushnashah/status/1297752528457801728

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.