There’s a bit of firestorm going on the internet at large right now concerning a former Yelp/Eat24 employee who goes by Talia Jane, who wrote an open letter to the CEO of her former workplace about the irony that she works for a food delivery giant but that she and many of her co-workers are starving.
The resulting furor spread in two directions: the people who rally in support for speaking out, and those who are shaking their heads at what an entitled brat that she is. Obviously, I’m going to address the latter.
First things first, I think it’s really fucking brave and inspirational that she did this. We live in a culture of fear and one of our biggest fears is getting fired, even if it’s a job that clearly doesn’t allow you to live. Talia stood up to that fear. She got fired. Just like freedom fighters of the past did.
But in the numerous pages of backlash she has received, I noticed a trend. Here’s a paraphrasing of what I found:
“Don’t live in the Bay Area unless you make at least $80K a year. It’s stupid to do so otherwise.”
“She made stupid choices to live in an expensive area and have a useless degree.”
“Just move somewhere else!”
“What an entitled brat, she was only there for a few months and didn’t give them a chance to let her go to the media department where she wanted to be!”
“Well, *I* make the same/less than her and don’t get free on-site food or health insurance like she does, who the hell does she think she is?”
“There’s cupcakes and bourbon in her Twitter feed, she can’t be suffering.”
[actual comment taken from her Medium blog by some tech bro] “Poverty doesn’t exist in America. Go to Latin America if you want to see real poverty.”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
How clueless. How utterly, utterly clueless.
While I’d expect the tech bros and people saying she shouldn’t have badmouthed her employer on the internet to not get it, what’s really the most baffling and saddening at the same time are the most cries of “She’s stupid and entitled!” are coming from people around my age (thirties) or slightly older who used to be in her income bracket or are still in it.
What people are missing in this whole frothing at the mouth at how dare she speak up when she’s not TOTALLY suffering, is actually a point I addressed here on DK some months back: these jobs exist, companies and individuals need them done, and the people who work these jobs don’t just disappear into the stratosphere when work is over. They need a place to live. And well, companies don’t offer jobs for fun and the hell of it. People don’t work them to generously provide their time to these companies. They work so they can afford stuff like housing and food among other things.
So “just move” is a stupid fucking non-answer to the problem of costs of living being too high in the Bay Area. It’s a pox on the countless companies there that they won’t pay wages that are actually proportionate with local living expenses if they need employees to work on-site. Once again, it need not be extravagant. But it needs to be sufficient enough to afford very basic living. If you want that employee to come in whenever you want, it doesn’t behoove you to have to have them schlep 60-90+ minutes each way.
Next up, so what if Talia gets insurance from her employer? America should make like a civilized country anyway and have universal healthcare and not have this onus be on employers. As for the free on-site food like the pistachios, bourbon, and cupcakes...dude, you can’t give a landlord a cupcake and a bottle of Wild Turkey. In theory you can if you have the rarity of a nice landlord. But you can’t pay rent with them. The power company will also not accept snack foods, coconut water, margarita mix, and whatever the fuck else these companies put in the break room in an attempt to get you to never leave.
While having employer-sponsored health insurance puts her in a better-off position compared to most people making minimum wage or just barely above it, just like the snacks you can’t pay your other bills with an insurance card. For those who are moaning about how dare she speak out when you don’t have insurance or are paying out the ass for it on your own? I’m facepalming at you.
Because if you make a middle class salary or far less than one, you should be applauding her for writing this letter and spurring this discussion. The responses to this letter really show something.
That something is that American workers are SO conditioned to being continually fucked with no lube by the oligarchs, that they just call this young woman entitled for speaking out.
Did they also notice that she spoke of her fellow co-workers— whose situations we don’t know in full detail— who were also starving, how one of them had to take to GoFundMe to pay her rent?
Living expenses are spiraling out of control while wages keep falling and hours get more inconsistent, and worker protections have eroded to Gilded Age levels. Jacob Riis, Samuel Gompers, George Meaney, Upton Sinclair, Michael Gold, and other heroes of the past who chronicled the world of shit they were living in as a result of unfettered capitalism and subsequently fought for change are totally rolling over in their graves at how many Americans are calling this former employee stupid and entitled when these workers themselves are/were not faring any better.
It really goes to show how well the divide-and-conquer tactics deployed by the rentier class have worked: pitting young against old, tech against non-tech, where I live is better than where you live, and you got a bigger crumb than me so how dare you complain.
To approach a denouement in this rant, I’d like to say this: fuck this whole “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” mentality. It is partly why we are where we are as a nation.
I am self-employed and have been vocal of my support for Talia Jane and I recognize I will lose some business as a result. That’s totally fine with me. I have both current and prospective clients who either agree or are indifferent to my views on this matter. But “just start your own business” is also as much of a non-answer as “just move” and frankly, companies like Eat24 clearly need this kind of labor so it doesn’t excuse things being the way they are. I can’t fault someone for doing what they have to do to support themselves and fear is an incredibly powerful motivator. Because I’m not beholden to any one client the way I’d be to an employer, I am not cuckolded by fear because I have the fortune to not be in fear of losing a job. Been there done that and I blog about THAT journey time to time on my own site.
But let’s face it: the hand wasn’t exactly feeding her or her co-workers. So hell yes, she was right in biting it.
And if people didn’t bite that hand time to time, we’d still have children getting injured and dying in coal mines and factory floors. We’d still have 80-hour work weeks expected of people working excruciatingly physical jobs. We wouldn’t even have a minimum wage, and still be using scrip at The Company Store.
To those who say that Talia Jane ruined her life, I’d say quite the opposite. Yeah, she pissed off lots of people. But she now easily has the kind of following that my own clients dream of having, the kind that will help them escape serfdom: the kind I myself fought to escape after a “stable” job that paid far more than the one she just lost threw me out on my ass at a really inopportune time.
It took bravery to do what she did and I hope it inspires more people to come out and do the same. Even if she came from and lived in better circumstances than a lot of the people I’ve seen canvassing The Fight for $15, local fights where I live in the Bronx to get better worker protections for car wash workers: we won’t get anywhere without uniting. If she had better circumstances than you, the reaction shouldn’t be to call her entitled.
It should be to join her fight and demand that work actually pays.
