A lifestyle influencer has been slammed after she called out a restaurant for their allegedly "rude" response to her collaboration request.
Jamieson May, also known by her TikTok handle @jamiesonmayyy, took to the video-sharing platform to "expose" a restaurant in Melbourne after they shut down any chances of a collaboration between the influencer and themselves.
May, who labels herself as a "travel, lifestyle, and food creator" with approximately 17,000 followers across multiple accounts, reached out to a vegan restaurant called Patsy's and was left "shocked" by the "disgusting" reply she received in response.
While she took aim at the eatery on social media hoping to warn others of her mistake, she was even more shocked to see users turn on her instead of the place she was blasting.
In the video, she claimed that she sent a message to Patsy's stating how she could be a beneficial partner to them, but was surprised that they responded to her with: "You don't seem to have any followers[.] Maybe you should approach us when you have over 100k."
The small-time influencer clearly didn't take too well to the reply and hit back with: "Sorry. But that's extremely rude."
The company wasn't having any of it and instead, doubled down on their earlier message.
"Perhaps...but you are pretending to be influential on social media and that's just not true and rather than me just saying that you are lying and pretending to be beneficial to our business... I just said come back when you're actually able to do what you think we should engage you to do," they said.
"Is it rude to question something that is obviously not true?" they added.
By this time, May had blocked the company's account from sending more messages.
"I just can't believe that someone else in the professional industry of marketing and having there (sic) own business would say this to another human being," she wrote in the caption of the video, which has now been viewed over 22,000 times.
"Your follower count does not define you! You might have 10x better content then (sic) someone with 1 million followers!!" she continued, before adding: "I wanted to create this video to let all other content creators know that this is extremely unprofessional and disgusting."
However, rather than getting the sympathy she was hoping for, people on the social media platform slammed her for "begging" for a "freebie", but the influencer told News.com.au that that wasn't the case.
"When I first reached out them, my message was a simple direct message that said ‘Hi! My name is Jamieson May and I am a UGC Creator! I would love to create some content for your business’,” she said, as per the outlet. "I never asked for any free services or free things but they bluntly responded with their 100k comment.
"I completely understand that they want specific influencers with high follower count, which is perfectly okay because they want it for exposure, but there is a much more polite and professional way to say it."
Mathew Guthrie and Clinton Trevisi, the owners of Patsy's also spoke to the outlet and defended their response, stating that it might have been blunt, but it was necessary.
"I think judging from her reaction to me being blunt about her unsolicited marketing reach out, she was surprised that we were not interested in working with her..." Guthrie told News.com.au. "Obviously the reason we did not want to collaborate with her is quite easy to understand when you glance through her profiles on various sites.
"Her followers are not really people that we have in the venue often and probably not the market that we are looking to engage with," he added.
She had reached out to the restaurant to see if they wanted to work with her. Credit: mgstudyo/Getty Images
The chefs went on to state that they believed her video to the response was a further marketing ploy to gain attention online.
"I think she was just hoping to increase her visibility with these outrage posts,” Guthrie continued before concluding: "It sort of has worked already but I am not sure how it will be able to be monetized as marketing."
Do you think the response by the company was "rude"?