J. Crew’s vice president of men’s merchandising Alejandro Rhett was recently in the unfortunate position of having to lay off some of his employees. But rather than going home and soberly reflecting on his responsibilities as a manager, Rhett spent the following evening getting drunk and hitting the town. Worst of all, he documented the whole thing on his Instagram, uploading photos with the hashtags #gonegirl and #hungergames.
The New York Post reports that Rhett helped deliver the news to several of the 175 employees laid off from J. Crew on June 10. He then partied it up at the Linen Hall bar with his other, still-employed co-workers.
He posted this photo to his personal Instagram, which is currently set to private.
While it looks like he might just have been hanging out with a couple of friends, other Instagrams have surfaced pointing to his lack of judgment. J.Crew employee Julie Stamos also posted photos of her and Rhett out that night on Instagram.
Vanessa de Jesus, a merchandiser at J. Crew, posted a photo of the two jumping in the air along with the caption “#gonegirl #roseallday #hungergames #maytheodsseverbeinyourfavor #jumpstreet #linenhall #jcrewcrew.”
The Hunger Games tags are most likely in reference to the book series by Suzanne Collins and movie adaptations starring Jennifer Lawrence, which tells the story of teenagers fighting to the death in a battle royale. Clearly, de Jesus was comparing The Hunger Games victors to the survivors left with their jobs at J. Crew.
de Jesus’s Instagram has since gone missing (though it’s more likely that she just changed her handle). It’s unclear whether or not Rhett was aware of the hashtags that de Jesus used to upload the photos, but he’s still being called out for partying after the layoffs.
An insider from J. Crew told the New York Post: “It’s just inappropriate that you’d be out drinking when people on your team had been laid off … J.Crew has serious issues right now, and no one in the office had a smile on their face that day.”
A J. Crew spokesman has also said, “As soon as we were made aware, the appropriate actions took place.”
The incident is somewhat similar to what happened after the recent shuttering of Lucky magazine, when an insider condemned ex-editor-in-chief Eva Chen for posting photos of happy-faced macarons following news of massive layoffs.
H/T The New York Post | Photos via The New York Post, Alejandro Rhett/Facebook