6 days ago
Reason why AFL WAG Paris Tier lost her sales job
The girlfriend of a professional athlete has revealed how she lost her job due to her rising profile on social media.
Paris Tier, who is dating Greater Western Sydney Giants player Conor Stone, divulged on her WAG — Women and Goals podcast that her social media profile led to her being fired from her job.
Ms Tier was working in sales merchandising, and part of her role led to her being contracted out at another businesses. At the time, she didn't have a lot of followers but her posts about what her life was like dating a professional athlete started to boost her profile.
'I started posting on TikTok a month into working this job, and I only had 2000 followers but my videos were averaging 30,000 views,' she told
Ms Tier said she wasn't posting about her job, but about her relationship with Stone. She said it started off with mean comments, but things escalated when she posted a clip about an NRL player. After backlash, she deleted the video.
'I got a call from a colleague and she said, '[Our boss] has called me saying you can't work tomorrow because somebody has complained about your TikTok',' Ms Tier said.
The AFL WAG was told the complaint was made not to her direct company, but the one that she was contracted to as part of her role. She asked the company's media and human resources if there were any issues with her social media, but neither department had any issues with the content.
At the time, Ms Tier had annual leave planned due to a medical procedure so she went on two weeks worth of leave.
'I took the two weeks off because I needed this to calm down before I go back to work, because obviously not everyone loves social media, and if your boss read something that you did online they have to believe it in a way,' she said.
'I was a little bit disappointed because when I messaged [my boss] about it, she said it was nothing. She essentially lied to me.'
During her time off, Ms Tier consulted an employment lawyer, received a probation update about why she 'wasn't the right fit for the role' and ultimately decided to leave the job. To this day, she has no idea where the complaint originated from or if it was even real.
'When this happened at work, I was in the state of mind of, 'Have I lost every opportunity to get a good job? Have I lost every opportunity to do a thing I love',' she recalled.
'And no, I haven't.'
Ms Tier revealed she works in a completely new industry now, and really loves it, finding the workplace incredibly supportive.
She said that contracts needed to highlight what issues they may have in regards to employee's social media presence, particularly as she never talked about the company online — barring the fact that it was on her LinkedIn profile. She said she hasn't added her latest workplace to her profile as she is scared it could happen again.
Ms Tier added that there is a belief that many people in her position are unemployed.
'I don't think people realise, they see someone and think, 'Oh my god she's a stay-at-home mum, bet she doesn't have half a brain cell',' she said.
'That woman is 90 per cent of the time on maternity leave, or young enough to still be figuring out their life.'
She said baseless assumptions about WAGs are 'not fair' and simply incorrect.
'People have assumptions because we don't post our work, but how can people post their work when individuals do something like this,' she said.
'It's not fair.'
