-from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/yelp-employee-complained-pay-online-post-fired-article-1.2540497

-by TOBIAS SALINGER NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, February 22, 2016, 9:25 PM

A Yelp customer service rep got fired because she posted this letter to the company’s CEO on the website Medium on Friday, she said.
A Yelp employee who slammed the company’s wages got fired after her letter to Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman went live online Friday.

The 25-year-old woman who goes by “Talia Jane” revealed what it’s like living in San Francisco on her $1,466-per-month and $8.15-per-hour salary after taxes in a post called “Dear Jeremy” on the website Medium.

Company executives at the restaurant rating service featuring 95 million user-generated eatery reviews denied she got canned over the viral post. Yet Jane – whose real name has been withheld from media reports – said she received word from her former employer that she lost her job because the post violated company policy.

“Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They’re taking side jobs, they’re living at home. One of them started a GoFundMe because she couldn’t pay her rent. She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage,” Jane wrote in the post.

“Another wrote on those neat whiteboards we’ve got on every floor begging for help because he was bound to be homeless in two weeks. Fortunately, someone helped him out. At least, I think they did. I actually haven’t seen him in the past few months. Do you think he’s okay?”

Jane, a customer service rep, was spending about 80% of her income on rent at her East Bay apartment, with little left over to pay utilities or transit fees, she wrote.

She said bread, which is free on the eighth floor of tech firm’s plush San Francisco office, was a luxury she couldn’t afford at home. Her poverty caused her to depend on a 10-pound bag of rice for meals, and a CVS employee felt so bad for her he loaned her $6 out of his own pocket when he heard her discussing her struggles with her boss, she said.

A Yelp spokeswoman declined to discuss her compensation or firing. She said in a statement that the company is expanding staff in its Phoenix office in part because executives “agree with her remarks about the high costs of living in San Francisco.” Stoppelman himself responded to Jane’s post in a series of tweets Saturday.

“I’ve not been personally involved in Talia being let go and it was not because she posted a Medium letter directed at me,” Stoppelman said. “Two sides to every HR story so Twitter army please put down the pitchforks.”

His former employee spoke in an interview with business news site Quartz about the more than $1,800 she’s received in donations since the post as well as backlash she got over past food pictures she displayed on social media. She was asked what she had in mind when she decided to write the letter.

“I know this sounds naive, but the original plan was I didn’t have a plan. I woke up hungry, and I thought I would send some tweets to the CEO and maybe he would see them,” she said. “I was looking at them and thought, ‘These are stupid. This doesn’t show any sense of validity or urgency. This is just a person being annoying.’”

She continued, “I figured I would write this all out. … And then everything f——- exploded.”

An Open Letter To My CEO

Dear Jeremy,

When I was a kid, back in the 90s when Spice Girls and owning a pager were #goals, I dreamed of having a car and a credit card and my own apartment. I told my 8-year old self, This is what it means to be an adult.

Now, seventeen years later, I have those things. But boy did I not anticipate a decade and a half ago that a car and a credit card and an apartment would all be symbols of stress, not success.

I left college, having majored in English literature, with a dream to work in media. It was either that or go to law school. Or become a teacher. But I didn’t want to become a cliche or drown in student loans, see. I also desperately needed to leave where I was living — I could get into the details of why, but to sum up: I wanted to die every single day of my life and it took me several years to realize it was because of the environment I was in. So, I picked the next best place: somewhere close to my dad, since we’ve never gotten to have much of a relationship and I like the weather up here. I found a job (I was hired the same day as my interview, in fact) and I put a bunch of debt on a shiny new credit card to afford the move.

Coming out of college without much more than freelancing and tutoring under my belt, I felt it was fair that I start out working in the customer support section of Yelp/Eat24 before I’d be qualified to transfer to media. Then, after I had moved and got firmly stuck in this apartment with this debt, I was told I’d have to work in support for an entire year before I would be able to move to a different department. A whole year answering calls and talking to customers just for the hope that someday I’d be able to make memes and twitter jokes about food. If you follow me on twitter, which you don’t, you’d know that these are things I already do. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get back to the situation at hand, shall we?

So here I am, 25-years old, balancing all sorts of debt and trying to pave a life for myself that doesn’t involve crying in the bathtub every week. Every single one of my coworkers is struggling. They’re taking side jobs, they’re living at home. One of them started a GoFundMe because she couldn’t pay her rent. She ended up leaving the company and moving east, somewhere the minimum wage could double as a living wage. Another wrote on those neat whiteboards we’ve got on every floor begging for help because he was bound to be homeless in two weeks.

Fortunately, someone helped him out. At least, I think they did. I actually haven’t seen him in the past few months. Do you think he’s okay? Another guy who got hired, and ultimately let go, was undoubtedly homeless. He brought a big bag with him and stocked up on all those snacks you make sure are on every floor (except on the weekends when the customer support team is working, because we’re what makes Eat24 24-hours, 7 days a week but the team who comes to stock up those snacks in the early hours during my shift are only there Mondays through Fridays, excluding holidays. They get holidays and weekends off! Can you imagine?). By and large, our floor pummels through those snacks the fastest and has to roam other floors to find something to eat. Is it because we’re gluttons? Maybe. If you starve a pack of wolves and toss them a single steak, will they rip each other to shreds fighting over it? Definitely.

I haven’t bought groceries since I started this job. Not because I’m lazy, but because I got this ten pound bag of rice before I moved here and my meals at home (including the one I’m having as I write this) consist, by and large, of that. Because I can’t afford to buy groceries. Bread is a luxury to me, even though you’ve got a whole fridge full of it on the 8th floor. But we’re not allowed to take any of that home because it’s for at-work eating. Of which I do a lot. Because 80 percent of my income goes to paying my rent. Isn’t that ironic? Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can’t afford to buy food. That’s gotta be a little ironic, right?

Let’s talk about those benefits, though. They’re great. I’ve got vision, dental, the normal health insurance stuff — and as far as I can tell, I don’t have to pay for any of it! Except the copays. $20 to see a doctor or get an eye exam or see a therapist or get medication. Twenty bucks each is pretty neat, if spending twenty dollars didn’t determine whether or not you could afford to get to work the next week.

Did I tell you about how I got stuck in the east bay because my credit card, which amazingly allows cash withdrawals, kept getting declined and I didn’t have enough money on my BART Clipper card to get to work? Did I tell you that my manager, with full concern and sympathy for my situation, suggested I just drive through FastTrak and get a $35 ticket for it that I could pay at a later time, just so I could get to work? Did I tell you that an employee at CVS overheard my phone call with my manager and then gave me, straight from his wallet, the six dollars I needed to drive into work? Do you think CVS pays more than Yelp? I worked a job similar to one at CVS. A manager spends half an hour training you on the cash register, you watch a video, maybe take a brief quiz, and you’re fully trained to do the entire job. Did you know that after getting hired back in August, I’m still being trained for the same position I’ve got? But Marcus at CVS has six dollars in his wallet, and I’m picking up coins on the street trying to figure out how I’ll be able to pay him back.

Speaking of that whole training thing, do you know what the average retention rate of your lowest employees (like myself) are? Because I haven’t been here very long, but it seems like every week the faces change. Do you think it’s because the pay your company offers is designed to attract young people with no responsibilities, sort of like the CIA? Except these people don’t even throw away their trash, because they still live at home and this is their very first job and they don’t have to take an aptitude test like at the CIA. Do you know how many cash coupons I used to give out before I was properly trained? In one month, I gave out over $600 to customers for a variety of issues. Now, since getting more training, I’ve given out about $15 in the past three months because I’ve been able to de-escalate messed up situations using just my customer service skills. Do you think that’s coincidence? Or is the goal to have these free bleeders who throw money at angry customers to calm them down set the standard for the whole company? Do you think there’s any point in training a customer service agent to learn and employ customer service skills? Or is it better to attract those first-time employees with their poor habits and lack of work ethic with the same wage part-time employees at See’s Candies make for standing by the door in a stupid outfit and handing out free chocolate? Do you think those free chocolates cost $600 a month per employee? Have you ever seen an angry See’s Candies customer? You know what I could do with $600 extra a month? For starters, I probably wouldn’t have to take money from Marcus at CVS just to get to work.

Will you pay my phone bill for me? I just got a text from T-Mobile telling me my bill is due. I got paid yesterday ($733.24, bi-weekly) but I have to save as much of that as possible to pay my rent ($1245) for my apartment that’s 30 miles away from work because it was the cheapest place I could find that had access to the train, which costs me $5.65 one way to get to work. That’s $11.30 a day, by the way. I make $8.15 an hour after taxes. I also have to pay my gas and electric bill. Last month it was $120. According to the infograph on PG&E’s website, that cost was because I used my heater. I’ve since stopped using my heater. Have you ever slept fully clothed under several blankets just so you don’t get a cold and have to miss work? Have you ever drank a liter of water before going to bed so you could fall asleep without waking up a few hours later with stomach pains because the last time you ate was at work? I woke up today with stomach pains. I made myself a bowl of rice.

Look, I’ll make you a deal. You don’t have to pay my phone bill. I’ll just disconnect my phone. And I’ll disconnect my home internet, too, even though it’s the only way I can do work for my freelance gig that I haven’t been able to do since I moved here because I’m constantly too stressed to focus on anything but going to sleep as soon as I’m not at work. Should I sell my car? It’s not my car, actually, it’s my grandpa’s. But the back left tire is flat and the front right headlight is out and the registration is due to be renewed in April and I already know I can’t afford any of that. I haven’t even gotten an oil change since I started this job (in August). But maybe I could find someone on Craigslist who won’t mind all of that because they’ll look at the dark circles under my eyes and realize I need the cash more than they do.

How about this: instead of telling you about all the ways I’m withering away from putting my all into a company that doesn’t have my back, I offer some solutions. I emailed Mike, Eat24’s CEO, about a few ideas to give back to our community for the holidays. He, along with someone named Patty, politely turned them down. But maybe you could repurpose them?
Originally, I suggested that Eat24/Yelp employees volunteer at local soup kitchens and food banks to give back to our Bay Area community (I see on your twitter that you care deeply about the homeless epidemic in our city) while also helping the different departments meet and mingle. Maybe instead, you can help set up something to allow Eat24/Yelp employees to get food from local food banks and soup kitchens? I’m pretty proficient at rice, but some hot soup would sure make up for not being able to afford to use my heater.

Originally, I suggested that Eat24 offer a matching donation with customers where they can choose a donation amount during checkout and Eat24/Yelp would match it and donate those profits to a national food program. Maybe instead, you can let customers choose a donation amount during checkout and divide those proceeds among your employees who spend more than 60% of their income on rent? The ideal percent is 30%. As I said, I spend 80%. What do you spend 80% of your income on? I hear your net worth is somewhere between $111 million and $222 million. That’s a whole lotta rice.

Originally, I suggested that Eat24 offer special coupon codes where half of the code’s value ($1) goes to charity. Maybe instead, you can give half the code’s value ($1) to helping employees who live across the bay pay their transit fares? Mine are $226 monthly. According to this website, you’ve got a pretty nice house in the east bay. Have you ever been stranded inside a CVS because you can’t afford to get to work? How much do you pay your gardeners to keep that lawn and lovely backyard looking so neat?

I did notice — and maybe this was just a fluke — that Yelp has stopped stocking up on those awful flavored coconut waters. Was that Mike’s suggestion? Because I did include, half-facetiously, in that email he and Patty so politely rejected that Yelp could save about $24,000 in two months if the company stopped restocking flavored coconut waters since no one drinks them (because they taste like the bitter remorse of accepting a job that can’t pay a living wage and everyone kept falling over into the fetal position and hyperventilating about their life’s worth. It really cut into the productivity that all those new hires are so prolific at avoiding). I wonder what it would be like if I made $24,000 more annually. I could probably get the headlight fixed on my car. And the flat tire. And maybe even get the oil change and renewed registration — but I don’t want to dream too extravagantly. Maybe you could cut out all the coconut waters altogether? You could probably cut back on a lot of the drinks and snacks that are stocked on every single floor. I mean, I could handle losing out on pistachio nuts if I was getting paid enough to afford groceries. No one really eats the pistachios anyway — have you ever tried answering the phone fifty times an hour while eating pistachios? Those hard shells really get in the way of talking to hundreds of customers and restaurants a day.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I know they’re not worth your time — did you know that the average American earns enough money that the time they would spend picking up a penny costs more than the penny’s worth? I pick up every penny I see, which I think explains why sharing these thoughts is worth my time, even if it’s not worth yours.

Your Friend In Food,
Talia

UPDATE: As of 5:43pm PST, I have been officially let go from the company. This was entirely unplanned (but I guess not completely unexpected?) but any help until I find new employment would be extremely appreciated. My PayPal is paypal.me/taliajane, my Venmo is taliajane (no hyphen). Square Cash is cash.me/$TaliaJane. Thank you so much for helping my story be heard.

“This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.” – Mr. Simon Newman, previously President of Mount St Mary’s University, a Los Angeles equity fund manager.

By Paul McMullen, 12/17/14
[email protected]
Twitter@ReviewMcMullen

EMMITSBURG, MD – “Simon Newman told an executive search committee that after nearly three decades “making very rich people richer,” he was looking for a change.

It is not, however, as if the Los Angeles-based financial executive had patterned his life after Gordon Gekko, Hollywood’s 1980s model of greed.

Newman founded software companies, led turnarounds, turned a tidy profit in the European pay-TV market and raised more than $3 billion in equity funding.”

While this domain is still held by those in the academy, it is dormant. When first launched in 2005, it persisted in ostensible use until 2011, the “sleeping giant”, Japanese would say. Mature scholars realize the pettiness, and fruitlessness of it all in the absence of civility, patience, charity, good humor, and benefit-of-the-doubt we constantly owe to our superiors and elders. However, the following does make its salient argument well, imho:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/ratestud.html

“…Generation Z’s interpersonal skills are often lacking as a result of not having gotten basic manners ingrained in them the way other generations did.”

November 23, 2015
Dr. Everett Piper, President
Oklahoma Wesleyan University

“This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.”

Forbes
MAY 10, 2012
A “Generation of Sissies”

-by John Mariotti, CONTRIBUTOR
My Other Website
http://www.mariotti.net

The “elephant in the room”— one big question in the minds of so many Americans is—“Why has the middle class in America lost so much ground, and when will it recover to earn better wages (and close the gap between the top earners and the middle class)?” The answers are brutally simple: ”Because America’s middle class became non-competitive globally,” and, “Not until American middle class workers—and the kind of work they do—become globally competitive again” There are two huge problems facing the America in the future: one is demographic, the other is cultural.

1) “Baby Boomers” are retiring from the work force at the rate of 10,000 per day, and will do so for 17 years. Most of them don’t have enough pension or 401(k) assets to support retirement for their life expectancy (15-20 years). Too few employers will hire these older folks, with their potential problems of age—reduced stamina and more health-related problems (and higher health care costs).

2) In recent decades, American parents have raised a “Generation of Sissies”—of spoiled, lazy, pampered and over-rated youth—who are highly educated, but in things that the world doesn’t value very much (and thus won’t pay for). The top 25% may be as good, as bright, as motivated as ever, and will likely be as successful as ever. The vast majority of this generation consists of formally educated, but spoiled, soft post-adolescents, who will struggle to be self-sustaining as adults. Because of this, they will not be able to support the massive wave of retired “Boomers,” who will be going broke in their later years. In eras past, the elderly were supported by the coming younger generation(s). Those days are gone.

Members of this “Generation of Sissies” have been the victims of being coddled, babied, pampered, misled, misguided, and under-educated so badly that their “take care of me” upbringing cannot be sustained as they move into adulthood. The parents, who did this, also share in the responsibility for the failure of America’s educational system.

I won’t lay all the “blame” for these failures on American youth—although they have been willing accomplices. Parents and educators failed to prepare them for adult life in the cold harsh world, and where they must compete for gainful employment. Then the youth chose easy and fun majors in college; not the ones in that are in demand by employers. Thus they can’t find jobs, or certainly not good paying jobs.

For too long, American parents have also abdicated the responsibilities for educating and raising their children to a cadre of teachers and educational institutions ill suited for the task at hand. Parents used to prepare children to take care of themselves—sort of an apprenticeship in becoming an adult. Along the way, they used to teach them, and demand of them, that they learn critical personal skills, and useful, responsible habits—like earning your own way in life. Not any more.

Now, because of globalization the jobs have gone to wherever qualified workers will do them for the least pay. American workers have fallen behind global competitors. Thus, the American middle class, now and for the foreseeable future, will have to “play catch up” —learning new skills and how to apply them—and then employers will have to regain the work that provides the jobs. Otherwise, the middle class will continue to languish with subpar wages—at least until it becomes competitive again, if that ever happens. The only part of the middle class with growth prospects are employees of new, small businesses that grow–when they are not stifled by an oppressive government regulations.

Worse yet, is the untimeliness of this “Generation of Sissies,” who think that there are no winners or losers. They learned this because everyone got rewarded just for participating. Trophies no longer represented hard work and winning to them. Success meant just being involved and “showing up”—and sometimes, not even that. News flash for Americans of this Generation of Sissies: In the cold, harsh world of 21st century global business there ARE winners and losers—and YOU are losing!

The “Generation of Sissies was victimized by too-busy parents, who abdicated their responsibilities, and tried to pass them off onto schools and teachers. The teachers were not prepared to handle these new responsibilities. Add to this the expectations that have been created: “free meals” (government funded, means “free”) that go far beyond the old school lunches; “free transportation” (or being driven to school); “free extracurricular activities,” and much more. And for this, all they had to do was“show up.” Even grades are no longer a dose of reality. Kinder words replace letter grades, to soften the truth of impending mediocrity.

Schools now teach “softer studies” (some of which used to be taught at home by parents) make up over 1/3 of total credits: “21st century life,” or “career-technical education, or “health, safety, & physical education,” or “visual & performing arts,” and “language arts literacy.” Many students can’t write a grammatically correct sentence, and some don’t even see the point in learning to write (cursive) at all. They use Text-messages and Tweets. Signatures are nearly obsolete.

Schools still require a modicum of Math and Science, but not enough to meet todays employment demands. In many cases, one 3-credit course (out of 110 credits) is offered on financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial topics. Teachers are not held to the highest standards either, since doing so would require compensating the best ones more, and removing the worst ones—and teachers’ unions (and tenure) simply won’t allow that. Today’s youth learn that being late, or absent isn’t so bad, because there is always an “excuse.” But when they get in the world of work, employers expect employees to show up, on time, every day, and actually work all day.

Then parents pay a fortune (instead of putting it away for retirement) for college because it used to be a sure path to a decent job (Now students graduate deeply in debt—over $1 Trillion and rising). A degree in the arts or humanities may have once been the ticket to a job, but it’s not any more! The youth of today and the adults of tomorrow simply have not been educated in the reality, the necessary skills and the knowledge they need to be competitive and self-sufficient. Many do not have a clear understanding of how much hard work and commitment they must invest to ensure their own future.

Too many people feel sorry for these “underachievers,” even though part of the failure is their own fault. The “Occupy movement” is filled with members of this “Generation of Sissies.” They expect someone to “take care of them” and give them what they cannot or are unprepared to earn for themselves. Who has what that they want? The very people who worked hard to get a good education, studied, learned, applied themselves and learned to compete.
There will be negative comments about my title: “Generation of Sissies”—as being demeaning. These comments will come mostly from the very same segment of society that helped create these problems—and still condones them. To them I say, “Prove me wrong.” Right now, the results confirm what I have written. Until America puts the onus for education back onto the people where it belongs—first on youth and their parents, and next on quality schools and good teachers—the American middle class is doomed to remain stuck where it is. Any other outcome is a delusion.

Can these problems be fixed? Yes, but it took an entire generation or more to create them, so the fix will be slow and painful–as it is proving to be right now. There is an even larger question. It is not, ” WILL AMERICA COMPETE in the global economy of the 21st century? It is, “DO AMERICANS HAVE THE WILL TO COMPETE? Will Americans take the necessary actions to make themselves and future generations competitive. We can only hope that the answer to this question is YES!