Boss Responds After Marina Shifrin’s Viral Quitting Video

Have you seen the video in which a woman quits her job, posting a dance clip allegedly filmed at 4:30 AM from an office in Taiwan?

The video made by Marina Shifrin has gone viral, and the allegations made — that Next Media Animation is essentially a content sweatshop — resonated with lots of disgruntled salaried workers who feel their jobs are a slog and unfair.

Heavily shared on Facebook, Shifrin’s tale of woe set to Kanye West’s “Gone” has catapulted the young woman to viral fame — and now her boss from Next Media Animation has responded… and we kind of feel bad for him.

Mark Simon, a commercial director at NMA, wrote to Gawker with his take on the “woman quits job” video currently doing the rounds, and Marina’s decision to name and shame her employer upon resignation.

In the letter, Simon says that Shifrin resigned personally before released a clip that he says was frankly puzzling to him, first and foremost because the workers at NMA have fairly reasonable terms and decent perks.

Simon begins:

“I am Mark Simon, I am the one who hired Marina Shifrin, who danced her way to fame in her resignation video which she sent to Gawker… Marina actually thinks enough of me to have given me a call the Thursday before she released this to say that she was resigning, which I appreciated. I asked her to tell her bosses, as I took our call to be in confidence. The first her boss saw was the video.”

He continues:

“Look, I actually like Marina a great deal. Marina herself has said we are a great company to work for, and I do not think she intended to hurt anyone, but it has happened.”

Simon adds, not angrily:

“There is an image now of a sweat shop, we are not. Marina made USD$42k per year. She had a 40 hr work week, 5 days a week. There is no expectation of OT on our behalf, you finish your shift and leave. In our office most folks leave when their shift is up as you work on news flow… Also we ask journalists to work one month per year on the midnight shift as we just need to cover the shift. We pay a differential of 30% for these hours, which I know are hard hours to work.”

I know what you’re thinking, job seekers — is this joint hiring? The NMA exec adds:

“I am not looking to slam her, nor am I engaged in anything but trying to help some other managers in their early 30’s, understand why the young lady they hung out with just cashiered them. I don’t think she meant for it to be seen as so harsh, but we are getting some nasty attacks on our managers, who she says she respects… I just want any chance to answer any questions, answer anything on Skype or on phone.”

Finally, he concludes:

“I am not spitting nastiness at Marina, but in her 9 months with us we sent her to Hong Kong twice, to Thailand for a media conference, and she just came back a month ago from two weeks in LA and NYC where she was pitching animation stories… We let her talk to all the press she wanted, we encouraged her stand-up, and frankly my folks in Taiwan are a bunch of [granolas]… They are nice folks.”

So, now we have the other side of the story from the “woman quits job” video — who do you think came out more sympathetic? Was Marina Shifkin treated fairly, or did she engage in an unfair move against NMA if what Simon says is true?