“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.”
Yup. As I said upthread, a move may not help because the co will use every trick possible to pay even less.
Actually, companies can get call centers in India staffed by people who speak some-sort-of-American-accented English and otherwise provide high quality service. But such call centers are likely uncommon because they cost more than the cheapest available call centers in India. They are also less likely to be noticed by most American callers (though sometimes those of South Asian heritage notice because of the way the call center employee (correctly) pronounces their names).
Probably not 31 holidays. Probably something like:
11 paid holidays (a typical number)
15 paid vacation days (a typical number)
5 paid sick days (the city of San Francisco requires a separate sick time allotment for employees based there)
OMG. 5 sick days?! One more reason to move the operations out of SF! Let them use vacation time to deal with flu!
Whine whine whine. Put me in the camp of very little sympathy for this woman. I won’t call her a girl like some here have. She’s 25 years old. At what age does one become an adult these days??
As others have stated, she should have lived with roommates. Back when I was in my 20s and living in suburban and metro areas of the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern USA, pretty much everyone, even the engineers, either lived at home, with roommates or with a significant other for several years out of college. Many of us didn’t have cars, either. Living on an extremely tight budget while fresh out of college in a high cost area is not a new phenomenon.
In addition to a full-time job, many of us worked a part-time job several nights a week or on weekends to make ends meet during our 20s.
All companies I have worked for have had a policy of having to work for 12 months in a given department before being eligible for a transfer to another dept.
She’s lucky to get food provided at work and such generous health benefits.
I don’t blame the company for firing her. I’m sure she signed terms and conditions to her employment which I am sure covered things like this. I’d bet that the paperwork she signed stipulated that her job was At-will employment.
Call center work has always been a crappy job. That’s nothing new, and given the benefits she was provided with, the Yelp call center job sounds better than many.
Are you sure that these benefits are offered to all employees? Stock grants? Most co’s that have RSU benefit issue stock grants only to full time, salaried employees above a certain level - typically, as a retaining tool for high value employees.
She is complaining about $8.50/hr AFTER taxes. We don’t know how much she made per hour. She is 25, so this is not her first job (or, we hope it wasn’t). She lives 25 miles away to save money, but then drives into the city, paying an $8 toll each way to save the $5.50 train fair? Does Yelp give free parking as well as free water and nuts? Hope she didn’t major in math.
Even my 20 year old who is terrible at math knows about FICA and taxes and transportation costs.
It states in her letter she was making $12.25 an hour, minimum wage in SF.
"She is complaining about $8.50/hr AFTER taxes. We don’t know how much she made per hour. "
It would be pistachios for someone so well versed in math to figure out what she made before taxes using the googlable tax rates. Let me make a very easy guess without even using any tax rates - it was the minimal wage in SF.
Where did she say she was driving to work every day paying $8 tolls each way? Her old car is not in drivable condition (flat tire and broken light), as she states in her open letter. How can she drive it? This is what she said about her transportation:
There’s a difference beyween providing company feedback in an INTERNAL, diplomatic way and broadcasting criticism publicly on social media. If I were to dress down my spouse on FB, I wouldn’t be surprised to be served divorce papers.
I cannot read her rant that she broadcast as widely as she could as anything but a pure publicity ploy with the knowledge that it would likely lead to her termination, as she said in her blog. I can’t think of a young person I respect who would write such a rant and publicize it like she did and NOT expect some harsh consequences. No, a 25-year-old who does this is NOT a child, even if her behavior IS childish. As one other HR writer has written in a blog, I believe HR will be very cautious about hiring her for any jobs in the future to the extent they are able to figure out who she is despite her “pen name.”
Her concerns and issues could have been raised via more constructive avenues and more professionally, if she valued her job and employer. Honestly, it sounds in her “open letter” like she just threw in all her grievances about life, which greatly diluted the impact of the low wages, tough working conditions, and limited opportunities for advancement.
Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences of speech. No one is saying she shouldn’t be able to say what she did only that once she does, she must live with the consequences. That is how the First Amendment works and should work.
And no one is forcing anyone to invest in yelp. If you do not like how they run the company, invest you money elsewhere. If enough people feel the same, yelp will have issues raising capital and may well change how it operates.
Some employers pay more than minimum wage. They presumably have made the determination that its in their best interests to do that. If you favor that, invest in those businesses and patronize those businesses. And avoid those businesses that do. If enough people feel the same way, more companies will likely take the same approach.
Some of us have kids in San Francisco getting rich, and some of us have kids there barely making rent, and some of our kids can’t find jobs. I just hope none of us have homeless kids in San Francisco sleeping in those tent cities under overpasses. The income disparity there is pretty staggering. I have no real opinion on her letter, but the situation deserves some conversation and attention in my opinion.
“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.”
This isn’t about freedom of speech, since the government isn’t involved.
My company would have had every right to fire me if I put out a Twitter or blog saying that our clients were jerks to work for or that their products sucked. I will leave it to MOWC to go through the particulars of this case.
Most people are at-will employees which mean they can be fired for any reason or none at all (so long at its not a protected class).
“OMG. 5 sick days?! One more reason to move the operations out of SF! Let them use vacation time to deal with flu!”
I can’t tell if you are being serious or sarcastic here, BB.
And ucb - 15 days of vacation is not a norm for brand new / junior employees.
Then maybe those kids should move to where the jobs are.
Reminds me of Yogi Berra’s statement: Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.
When our first kid headed for SF, husband and I gave him very bad advice. We advised him he wasn’t going to be able to afford to live out there long term and to accept one of his other job offers. We showed him spread sheets. He told us the opportunities were there. He was correct, but that was luck more than anything else as far as I can tell. I am calling it the modern day Gold Rush. Some are lucky and getting rich. You have to be out there to have a chance. imho. fwiw.
I had hoped my kids would come back to the east coast. There are no comparable jobs with comparable salaries, even taking cost of living into account. It will be interesting to watch what unfolds. Who survives the Gold Rush?
alh–
the san fran /silicon valley bubble is going to burst real soon. (it is a cycle) the recovery will occur but it will be less centered in CA and will be in Austin,TX(and surrounding areas), fort lauderdale/boca raton and pittsburgh. (IMO)