Almost any company that decides to open its HQ in California is asking for difficulty. There are exceptions. The state is simply too toxic for effective economic growth for most businesses.
She may have some writing skills, but that does not make someone ‘smart’. Clearly she had a problem with basic math before choosing her job, apartment, lifestyle.
how many roommates does she have?
why doesn’t she eat dinner at work right before she leaves?
… I don’t get it. She knew what the salary was. If you don’t want the job, don’t take the job.
What a crap load of Millenial sense of entitlement.
You need to actually read the letter she wrote:
“An Open Letter To My CEO”
https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.3waaq1cbt
She states hyperbolically in her letter:
So she packed up and VOLUNTARILY moved with no job offer in hand, to one of the MOST EXPENSIVE COST OF LIVING PLACES IN THE WORLD.
Armed with a degree in English Lit and “without much more than freelancing and tutoring under my belt”, she took a call-center customer service job—a low-skill job that doesn’t require a college education. Then she complains that she was expected to vet herself by working in this dept for a year before Yelp would move her to the Media dept.
She further complains that,
So why didn’t she live at home since she wanted to be near her dad, or at least get a roommate for her apt? If she got a roommate, then the 80% would be only 40%. My divorced niece in her 30’s is living in the Bay Area with a roommate, so why is it too good for Miss Millenial?
She goes on to diss the free medical/dental/vision insurance:
Then she complains about the free snacks that Yelp lays out for the call center employees, that pistachio nuts are a dumb snack choice:
And complains that no one liked the flavored coconut water:
She publically personally attacks the CEO in the letter:
I’d fire her butt, too.
It was not her “home.” The way I read it she was apparently estranged from her father. So in a sense she took the job offer hoping that maybe while being in the same area she could build some relationship with him. Kids can have unrealistic dreams that relationships are fixable. Just check a few recent threads here in the cafe.
And I am sorry - if I were the shareholder, I would be royally ticked off that the company wastes my value on buying expensive “healthy” crap for its employees! Maybe the exposé of shareholder waste got her fired!
She makes no mention of actually having cultivated ANY relationship with dear daddy, after moving all that great distance to be near him, with minimal skill set and NO job. It is weird to me for anyone to expect their employer to “pay their phone bill,” and pay their $20 copay, which is MUCH lower than many, many other insurance plans. Many folks would be happy to trade insurance plans with this whiner. Basic math is VERY lacking. If she can’t afford public transportation AND her car, why does she keep both? Agree, that many, many folks have room mates to save one costs in SF, including physicians and others. They don’t whine and just figure it’s part of living in SF.
I have never had an employer who provided free food for me and would be very grateful if I did. One could probably arrange to meet most nutritional requirements from work food and not have to buy groceries.
I feel like there’s an awful lot of judging going on here. The point is, she was fired for writing a Yelp-style review of Yelp itself. Her salary and particular complaints (and her style of making them) are a side issue. The main issue is freedom of speech. Can any company take that away in their by-laws or whatever they call it? Pistachios are not exactly a state secret.
When you put yourself out there as she did in her open letter, you have to expect you will indeed be judged. The things she points out show abundant poor judgment by her. I fail to see what Yelp! did which was different from what she was promised–a job at the wages and with the benefits she got. When you get what you were told you get and according to your employment contract, why whine and embarrass your employer?
She was fired for embarrassing her employer, not for being low wage.
Yes, as I said, why embarrass your employer when you get the wage you were promised when you got hired? That is poisoning the well.
Constitutional “freedom of speech” is only protected speech when it’s criticism of one’s government. There’s no constitutional right to publically smear your employer without consequences.
She failed to observe the rule that even my dog knows:
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Teresa Chambers was fired from the US Park Police for saying something that displeased somebody. 7 years later she got her job back, all the back pay, and lawyers fees. We all got to pay for that!
More recently, someone wrote an expose about being an NFL temp during the Super Bowl. I guess they couldn’t fire him since the job was over so maybe they should have sued him? For telling the truth as he experienced it?
P.S. Is it really “smearing your employer” to complain about low wages and bad snacks? What if she complained about bad bosses and a toxic environment?
“The main issue is freedom of speech. Can any company take that away in their by-laws or whatever they call it?”
I looked back for the poster that GMTplus7 is quoting and couldn’t find it. I’m assuming you are young so remember what GMT said. The courts have upheld this. Also you don’t have a right against search and seizure at work or privacy on your work phone or emails.
Girl was working for less than my kids are paid after 10th grade in VA. It was her bad decision to agree to that salary though. It sounds like she had the opportunity to move up after a year and she ruined it.
So all of you who do not mind paying your workers minimum wage… Do you think it is great that the company can afford to waste shareholder value on the rent for its shiny headquarters because it can save a few bucks by paying peanuts (or rather pistachios) to a class of workers? I would not invest a penny in a co that houses a call center with $10/hour employees in a facility with multi-million dollar annual rent! It can be done more efficiently elsewhere.
FYI, for folks who say she had access to all of this free food… Free food is pretty much an expectation in Silicon Valley, it is not a novelty or a benefit. But as investor I would be upset that co buys overpriced crap that is being sold as health food.
^^Yeah they could move their call center off shore as many other companies have.
I certainly would not invest in any company that is dumb enough to open a low-skill call-center in vanity location like downtown SF.
she wasn’t just getting min wage. She mentioned the employer provided benefits were great, including free, full health/dental/vision insurance (which is a heck of a better deal than I get as a skilled professional working for a Fortune Global 500 company). Yelps’ website lists these other benefits for fulltime SF employees:
Hey, why not - people in India need to feed themselves, too. No, they cannot move their call center offshore for obvious reasons. The customers who call in do not call with technical questions. Do you want people with Indian accent to answer calls from irate restaurant or business owners who are inquiring about bad reviews and want the co to remove them? Let me guess what the outcome would be. Yelp knows that they need very articulate, well spoken people to answer these calls in perfect English… So they are stuck with American workforce. However, last time I checked, there is a ton of empty office space in Oakland or other similarly beautiful locales. Heck, even such exotic location as Detroit would likely welcome a bunch of Yelp folks. 
I think most of us just think the way this woman had her rant when she got what she contracted for when she took the job is just inappropriate. I’m sure there were constructive methods that may have been used to address food preferences. Her dominance complaint is her low wages which should NOT have been a surprise, since that was what she had agreed to in accepting the job.
It does sound like there are quite a few benefits that Yelp gives it’s workers that most other people may not be getting. 31 days paid holidays is a lot. Neither H nor I have ever had full, free health insurance with only a $20 copayment, which most people would be very grateful for!
31 days of paid holidays is shareholder waste.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0667000.html indicates the following median household incomes (in descending order of population in the San Francisco bay area):
$81,829 San Jose
$75,604 San Francisco
$52,583 Oakland
$101,535 Fremont
$60,354 Santa Rosa
$62,013 Hayward
$100,043 Sunnyvale
$65,798 Concord
$91,583 Santa Clara
$58,371 Vallejo
$63,312 Berkeley
$64,702 Fairfield
$54,589 Richmond
$65,254 Antioch
Although some of these are quite high compared to the California median of $61,094 and US median of $53,046, it indicates that households can live on incomes of around $60,000 in the San Francisco bay area. Of course, the high income people doing the complaining that you are referring to would probably consider any of these income levels to be unacceptably low to maintain their preferred living standard.
I’m surprised by the harsh response to this young woman’s letter. My goodness, she’s a kid! She took the job for a good reason. She was hoping to pay her dues in customer service and then, having gotten her foot in the door, make a move into media. What she did not realize and learned the hard way, was that she was not being paid a living wage and that the job was a dead end. That she was * fired * for criticizing the company is what incenses me most. I agree with @greenwitch that what she did was tell the truth as she experienced it and that such a statement doesn’t rise to the level of “smearing her employer.” And frankly, shame on Yelp. Rather than taking in the feedback and considering the idea that there is a group of young people struggling to live on the pay they are receiving, they fire the young person who speaks out?
For those of you who suggest they move the call in center to Arizona, there is already a large call in and sales center in Arizona. My daughter has several college educated, intelligent friends who accepted jobs there out of college. They too were lured in with the promise that they could transfer to a different department after putting in six months in the call center or in sales. Guess what? The conditions are even worse there. The pay is less, the hours are awful, the sales demands are awful, heck, the job is awful. The turnover is constant. The opportunities to move up after a year are, for the most part, illusory.