A popular baby clothing company is under fire after reportedly firing an employee who requested to work remotely while her infant was in the neonatal intensive care unit. Marissa Hughes and her partner adopted a baby boy born at just 22 weeks of gestation, and asked her employer, Kyte Baby, to allow her to work remotely so she could be with him while he was in the NICU. In a TikTok video that went viral last week, a woman who says she is Hughes' sister claims the Texas-based company denied her request and terminated her employment, CNN reports. Amid the backlash that ensued, with some customers saying they'd boycott the brand, Kyte Baby founder and CEO Ying Liu tells Today the company offered Hughes her job back and Hughes declined.
Liu's initial apology and explanation, issued on TikTok, was criticized as wooden, and she took to TikTok again hours later to admit her first video had indeed been scripted. In her second, "off script" video, she explained that Hughes had worked for Kyte Baby for about seven months prior to the birth of her baby, and that she was granted the two weeks of paid maternity leave she qualified for as long as she agreed, as employees are asked to do, to return to work for at least six months after the leave. Hughes then suggested the remote work option, but, says Liu, "her role was largely on-site" so Liu made the decision—which she now admits was "terrible," "insensitive and selfish"—to decline the request and let Hughes know her job would be there for her should she later decide to return. Hughes confirms she has no plans to go back to work there but is happy the company, which touts itself as family-friendly, plans to revise its maternity leave policy. (More maternity leave stories.)
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