The Cutting Room Floor controversy: How a $55K job listing turned into a flashpoint for fashion’s wage debate

Fashion podcaster Recho Omondi, host of The Cutting Room Floor, faced intense backlash this week after posting a job listing that critics said embodied everything wrong with pay in fashion and media.

Backlash over the $55K salary

Almost immediately, followers criticized the offer. Many said the listing described three jobs rolled into one. One commenter wrote, “$55k in 2025 is below the poverty line in NYC. She tried it!!” Another on TikTok said, “The minimum salary to be exempt from overtime in New York City is $1,237.50 per week ($64,350 annually) as of January 1, 2025, increasing to $1,275 per week ($66,300 annually) on January 1, 2026.”

Although Omondi later pulled the job listing, journalist Ira Madison III preserved a copy on his Substack. He shared the full listing details and the issues with it.

He also pointed out that when Omondi went live to apologize for it, she said, “If you’re the kind of person where 55K is nothing to you and you’re like, ‘Uh, what? Like I would never take that. That’s not even livable. I can’t do anything.’ That means your lifestyle is just different. There’s somebody else in the world who’s like, ‘That’s a great opportunity for me. I would love to do that. My expenses are low. I’m a young person.’ […] If you want to live alone, in New York, this is not the job for you.”

As Madison noted, by saying, “a young person” in reference to the person who would take this job, Omondi was inadvertently discriminating against old people, which isn’t legal.

Not everyone condemned Omondi. Several people on TikTok noted that her offer looked typical for fashion’s entry-level roles.

One TikToker noted, “It’s not a lot of money but idk if people are actually aware of how little money many many people make in NYC. 55k isn’t uncommon depending on the industry.”

Critics on TikTok highlighted the fact that only people with a safety net are able to afford to be underpaid.

Omondi defends $55,000 salary as industry standard

Nevertheless, Omondi defended herself in a TikTok Live. “It’s not lost on me that that’s not a glamorous wage. You can’t be living lavishly,” she said, adding that she was only paid $30K annually when she left school. She asked her audience directly, “Where do you guys think the $55K is coming from?”

Her defense didn’t calm critics. Some accused her of clinging to the outdated logic that people have to “pay their dues” to move up in the world. Despite the outrage, around 800 people applied for the position before she ultimately froze hiring.

The backlash grew when, amidst the conversation about the position at The Cutting Room Floor, Omondi released a new podcast episode with Gwyneth Paltrow. Listeners called the choice comically fitting. One wrote, “of course she had Gwyneth Paltrow on. fits the brand very well iykyk.”

Omondi issues a paywalled apology

As anger spread, TikTok user @sixtwentyseven shared a subscriber-only recording from Omondi’s Patreon. In it, Omondi admitted, “We did a poor job communicating it. I mean, it was so poorly communicated that, therefore, it was poorly understood, right?” She argued that people mistakenly believed the job merged three roles into one, when that “just wasn’t the case at all,” despite the fact that she personally had said that it was essentially three jobs in one.

Ultimately, she chose to halt the hiring process. “We’ve decided we’re no longer hiring for this role,” she explained. “We kind of made a mess out of this unintentionally, and we feel it’s best at this time to just freeze the hiring because the last thing we want is to bring anyone into the operation who feels negatively about it. Who feels like they had to take it because they’re down so bad.”

She also stressed the challenges of running a four-person company. “We’re a small business, you know, we’re learning in real time,” she said. “There’s only four of us, four full-time people, and this was a wake-up call, I think.”

@sixtwentyseven I’m a paying member of @The Cutting Room Floor’s Patreon and woke up to an email with her response to what she’s calling “$55k”. Sharing with TikTok because I think the discourse around employers, hiring practices, employee experience, equitable pay, and how small businesses navigate growth is important. I have many thoughts on this response… the intentional exclusion of mentioning the role offered zero benefits, overuse of “we” language instead of “I” as the owner and founder, telling folks that her content calendar absolutely couldn’t be changed 😩 which is a joke bc I work in media and content calendars are made up and within the control of the org… not acknowledging that the pay was below New York Employment law minimums. So much to unpack. #50k #hiring #employee #businessowner #thecuttingroomfloor ♬ original sound – Aïcha

@tcrfff and @sixtwentyseven did not respond immediately to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok DM.