Here’s Why People Are Boycotting Paint Store Sherwin-Williams

Twitter is calling for a boycott of Sherwin-Williams after it fired a worker for making TikTok videos of the paint mixing process.

The worker, Tony Piloseno, made his story public after getting fired. He creating a mass following on TikTok showing how paint is mixed for the wide variety of paint tones that Sherwin-Williams offers at its stores.

"I'd just downloaded TikTok, and the videos took off almost immediately. It was just me doing a few customer orders here and there," Piloseno told BuzzFeed. "When we were slow, I was making videos showing the process of it all."

What started off as a fun side project for Piloseno, soon turned into a viral following with his videos garnering millions of views on TikTok, which made him think that Sherwin-Williams may be interested in the idea for its own marketing campaign.

When Piloseno presented the idea to Sherwin-Williams’ marketing department, he was rejected and later fired after one of his videos showed him adding blueberries to the paint, prompting a series of customer calls to the paint company.

Pilosenso was fired for “gross misconduct,” for using company time and equipment to make the TikTok videos. Pilosenso, who has over 1.4 million followers on TikTok, claims he bought his own paint with his employee discount but admitted to filming when the store was slow or closed, BuzzFeed reported.

“They first accused me of stealing — I told them I purchased all my paint," he told the news outlet. "They made me answer a bunch of questions like when I was doing this, where, if there was anyone in the store while I was doing [filming]. There was never anyone with me while I doing it."

Julie Young, vice president of global corporate communications at Sherwin-Williams told Buzzfeed, "While we don’t discuss the details of employee matters publicly, what I can tell you is that we were made aware of the TikTok videos produced by Anthony Piloseno through a customer complaint. We take all complaints seriously and thoroughly investigated the customer’s concerns. Following the investigation, Mr. Piloseno was let go in July 2020 due to multiple Company policy violations."

Twitter seemed to disagree with the decision that Sherwin-Williams made, calling for a boycott of the paint store over the worker’s firing.

One use called out Sherwin-Williams for the “monumentally stupid”move.

Another Twitter user criticized Sherwin-Williams for stifling “its most motivated employees.”

Others called on Behr Paint and Benjamin Moore to hire Piloseno.

Another Twitter user said Sherwin-William was “soul-crushers” for the firing decision.

And one Twitter user summed up their thoughts on the matter by simply saying, they’ll never buy paint at Sherwin-Williams again.

Piloseno has moved on but has not let his love of paint mixing go. He has moved his project to a friend’s basement and continues to make TikTok videos for his fans, but he says he now shops at Lowe’s.