'Just Like Actual What the Fuck': InstaStory Shoots Thunderbolt Into Heart of Cupcakes and Cashmere Community

Alina Gonzalez, a former employee of the popular lifestyle blog Cupcakes and Cashmere, has released one of the longest Instagram stories I personally have ever seen to publicly hash out the circumstances of her firing. In the words of Alina’s Instagram story: “Every. Single. BOSS. I have spoken to. Who, hashtag, work at real Companies, have had real Jobs, manage real teams, cannot believe she was so small, and petty, that she never said another word to me again and did not have the personal integrity and wherewithal to send a professional courteous note saying thank you and goodbye.”

Cupcakes and Cashmere, if you’re not familiar, was founded in 2008 by The Hills alum Emily Schuman, whose brand is best encapsulated by this line of custom doughnuts spelling “FRIYAY!” She currently runs it with Geoffrey Fuller, her husband and the president of Cupcakes and Cashmere, and Leslie Stephens, the site’s editor; Alina was the site’s editorial director. Alina’s claim, made over the course of multiple Instagram stories and comments (she has 19.5K followers), is broadly that she was fired because, while Emily and her husband were on vacation in Japan, she and Leslie—who she says reported to her—didn’t work from the office full-time as expected. According to Alina, Leslie then “snitched” because she is an “absolute fake, two face.”

“What happened was because I worked at a 2 person, husband wife operation run out of a house as basically the third member of their family, it’s not a normal or healthy work situation, at all,” Alina claimed. “There are no boundaries, and culture is set from the top down. Leaders lead.”

Let’s back it up! It first dawned on the Cupcakes and Cashmere community around April that Alina was suddenly no longer around, as noted by GOMI, a popular internet destination for people who relish blogger drama:

On April 25, in a blog post titled “An Emotional Few Weeks,” Emily told her readers about the sudden death of one of her young daughter’s friends, her subsequent anxiety, the illness and recovery of her cat Rocco, and Alina’s firing:

To compound matters even more, we had to let Alina go once we returned from Japan. It was not a decision we took lightly and the fact that we considered her to be family made it even more difficult. It was disheartening and stressful and addressing such a private business matter publicly felt both necessary and inappropriate at the same time.

But it wasn’t until recently that the raw tension between Alina and her former employer began to leach out into the public sphere.

On Wednesday, GOMI revealed that Alina had published a lengthy Instagram story explaining why she preferred the flexibility to work in places other than the office—“there were fruit flies and smells,” for one—and why she and Leslie, the site’s sole other employee, allegedly agreed that they did not need to be in the office all day—“There was an understanding that it was a retarded expectation,” Alina wrote, adding “sorry for the hard R—I’ve never claimed to be politically correct, I’m sorry, I love all people.” Leslie, according to Alina, then opted to tell on her, because she is a “snitch who clearly wanted me gone // wanted my job, and didn’t give a FUCK about not fucking me over.”

(We’ve reached out to Cupcakes and Cashmere for comment and will update if they respond. We’ve also reached out to Alina for further comment.)

Then, in over 60 new slides of white text shrouded in bloody crimson, Alina (@thehyperbalist) went into even more detail and aired a number of additional complaints about the Cupcakes and Cashmere work culture.