while I am not 100% against her being fired for embarrassing her employer…she still exposed a semi hidden secret in silicon valley/san fran…not everyone working for the companies associated with the tech/app boom make 6 or 7 figures a year with endless benefits and perks.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-employee-gets-sacked-after-Dear-Jeremy-post-6844695.php
one simple solution…which the ceo mentioned in his response… is opening a location in Arizona.(should have been long ago) I get san fran is the playground/living room for the wealthy tech folks but…what about the “peasants”? if you will not or can not pay them more your non highly compensated employees could be in any number of places like Arizona, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Alabama, Delaware etc…(pretty much anyplace other than san fran or NYC)
Maine. Come to Maine.
Did the employee take a pay cut after beginning at a higher wage? Or did she take the job at that low wage?
I’d fire any employee who did that to me. I wouldn’t even think two seconds about it.
The issue here is that California has created its own inflated economy. She makes plenty of money, just not there. 1200+ for rent?
This is why Toyota is moving to Texas. People can actually afford to live here.
It really does not matter the scenario. The huge, huge error she is making (and too many people make) is thinking the pay is determined by her or even linked to her. The pay is determined solely by the production value of the job itself. No way should an employer pay more than $X/hr for a job that returns $X/hr in production value.
As to this post’s questions, here is a position I was in a couple times. A competitor dropped its prices and since products were comparable, we had to drop prices as well. However, because of our larger scale of operations, we could not sustain a price drop without reducing labor costs (easiest to reduce because they are the lion share of overall operating costs and can be done immediately). Therefore, gave employees a pay cut to keep division open with the alternative being total shutdown in one year. Unfortunately for them, the production value of their positions was now different. If now want higher pay, need to acquire new skills that return that demonstrated monetary value. No use complaining to the CEO in these situations.
torveaux–economics 101.
Actually, if that is the true reason for her being fired (which I doubt), it can be challenged legally. Discussing conditions of employment, including wages, is protected activity. This discussion extends to social media posts.
There is a difference between discussing wages and publicly disparaging your employer.
Life is full of choices. She does not have to live where she lives. She did not have to work where she worked.
I know quite a few 25-28year old college graduates who work at equivalent jobs (or worse) and live at home. Maybe this diatribe should be looked at as cautionary reading for 18 year olds as they head off to college. Career choices, locale choices, and lifestyle choices all matter.
Sure.
But, it is quite different to make it seem as if your employer is being mean to you and thus directly affecting how present customers and potential customers see the company.
The amount of bread in her fridge has nothing to do with the bread in the company’s fridge. She is a making demeaning comparison that is not even related. In short, she demeaned the company for having more bread in its fridge than she has, as if the company has some obligation to give her its bread to take home, and is being mean for not doing so. That is way beyond “discussing conditions of employment, including wages.”
What the employee should have wrote if she wanted to discuss “condition of employment” is “Thanks for having all that free bread for us to eat while at work,” instead of complaining that she cannot take the company bread home. This is just silly.
I am quite sure there are tons of people with no jobs that would love to have this job; the company will have no issue filling the position.
Look- I’m a lawyer for a major employer. I’m just telling you that the NLRB has upheld things like this as protected. You can’t cross the line to harmful conduct towards your employer, but that line is a moving target.
momofwildchild…I would as the employer ask for a jury trial. I feel this is an easy win for yelp.
I am sure they have to go to arbitration first but if yelp loses in arbitration I would go all the way. also on a side note did you notice her screen name? that will not help her either.
I am sure there are places where you could survive on $1466 a month, but California is certainly not one of them (unless you are living at home.) I think she has to take responsibility for making the move to CA when all she had was a minimum wage job to support herself. And she has college debt. That was a poor decision.
The letter was probably ill-advised, but frustrated 23 year olds do stupid things. I think including the link to Stoppelman’s house is probably what did her in. If you read the whole letter, she is actually a very good writer. I found the parts on the coconut water and pistachios hilarious.
Really? I wouldn’t. Wages are stagnant and people are frustrated. I’d bet a dollar a jury would be mighty sympathetic to a person frustrated living at/near minimum wage and getting let go by a multibillion dollar company for daring to say something.
It sucks for her, but honestly is this much different than students taking out thousands in loans they won’t be able to repay? In both cases the individuals aren’t doing basic planning and applying a little realistic thinking.
Before moving she could’ve looked up local rents and thought a little bit harder about whether or not she could live on minimum wage in an area with one of the highest costs of living in the entire US. I have a lot of sympathy for her and other minimum-wage earners, but I also wish people like the woman in this story would plan ahead and think a little bit harder before getting herself into a situation entirely of her own making then proceeding to complain and blame others.
Yelp CEO did not hesitate to give a one-star review to a restaurant where by his own admission he did not even eat:
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/yelp-ceo-reviews-his-own-business-after-10-years/
“momofwildchild…I would as the employer ask for a jury trial. I feel this is an easy win for yelp.”
Even though some think that corporations are people, don’t bank on jurors being sympathetic to a company with a $5B or whatever market cap when the other side is a penniless 23 yr old who is highly likeable. I’m sure MOfWC has seen it all in her years as a corporate attorney and will be able to make a decision based on the actual circumstancesnces instead of advice by some posters named BB and zo. 
Oh for crying out loud, she was working at a customer service call center, she was not working at some high tech, high skill job. How much do you expect someone at a call center should get paid? Is it any different than working at an insurance, retail or airline call center? Should a janitor working at Yahoo be paid differently than a janitor at a school? Some how people have this illusion just because one works at a Google, FB, even Yelp it means one deserves to be paid mega bucks. This girl should have figured out before she took the job that she wasn’t going to make her ends meet. I would have had more sympathy if she said she was promised a better job or higher pay after working there for 6 months and Yelp didn’t come through with their promise.