By now you’ve likely heard of Talia Jane, the young lady who was fired from Yelp for stating an obvious truth: She did not make enough money working a full-time job to purchase groceries. She stated in her open letter to Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman that her after-tax take home pay of $8.15 an hour is just not enough to survive on. She does not live an extravagant life, even though some of her critics pointed out plenty of apparent high-end living in her Instagram and Twitter posts (which she explains in her interview with Quartz). She details the bills she has to pay, like rent, phone, gas, and electric—and all of the other issues that make life harder just because you’re poor.
Should she fix the headlight in her grandfather’s car that she was using, or fix the flat tire? Should she turn the heat on at night, or put more clothes on? Should she get an oil change, or pay the car’s registration fee? She described drinking water before bed, so that she wouldn’t wake to hunger pangs during the night.
Posting this as an open letter to her employer did get the not unexpected result: Shortly after her blog post went out, she was fired from Yelp for stating the truth. They called it a “violation of Yelp’s Code of Conduct.” The fact of the matter was, she simply was not paid enough to put a roof over her head and eat in the location that Yelp chose for its business, San Francisco.
In an interview she did with Quartz after being fired, she stated:
...I dropped a pants size and a half. The ones I’m wearing now used to be my skinny pants. My body’s completely messed up. My kidneys have issues, and it’s not because I was eating prosciutto everyday.
Of course, this being the information age in America, everyone has an opinion, and a writer named Stefanie Williams had to have her say and took a dig at Talia Jane’s work ethic.
This is about this girl’s personal responsibility to be an adult and find a job, or two (God forbid she have to give up a weekend day to be a waitress), an an affordable living situation and an affordable city in which to work…
She goes on further:
The issue is that this girl doesn’t think working a second job or getting roommates should be something she has to do in order to get ahead after three months of an entry level job in the most expensive city in the country. She believes Yelp should cover the cost of the financial decisions she’s made which include living alone and accepting that salary, two options that any sane person would never make. She believes she deserves these things that most of us would call luxuries. You expected to get what you thought you deserved rather than expected to work for what you had to earn. And that’s the problem entirely.
Work ethic is not something that develops from entitlement. Quite the opposite, in fact. It develops when you realize there are a million other people who could perform your job and you are lucky to have one. It comes from sucking up the bad aspects and focusing on the good and above all it comes from humility. It comes from modesty. And those are two things, based on your article, that you clearly do not possess.
Talia Jane’s situation is no different than that of millions of other Americans, and Ms. Williams is totally missing the point of the problem. The problem is not work ethic. The problem is a corporate culture that puts profits over people. Now, it can’t be said that Jeremy Stoppelman is an evil CEO who earns more money than he is worth—last year his total compensation was $66,912. However, he does have a net worth of $222 million. It’s doubtful he is going to be hungry, or ever be forced to decide if he should fix a headlight or get an oil change. The point of Talia Jane’s post is that if you are working a full time job, you should be able to afford the basic necessities of life: Food and shelter. That is not being entitled. Hell, just 30 to 40 years ago, it was the norm.
This is not something that’s just happening to millennials. A week ago Saturday, on a rare 50 degree February day in Wisconsin, I stopped at a local watering hole in the neighborhood I grew up in for lunch. The bar has not changed much over the years. Its decor is still from the ‘70s, and it has seen better days. The bartender/cook was a wonderful woman, 47 years old, who was working as a part-time bartender, and cleans houses full time. She had been laid off by the same company twice in a five-year period. The second time she had to train her lower-paid replacement. She is on Badgercare (Wisconsin’s version of Medicaid), she had been uninsured for seven years, she felt she had no choice but to enroll, and feels guilty about receiving a handout.
If it were just about work ethic, the woman tending bar last Saturday would not be eligible for Badgercare—she would be making enough money to support herself and purchase insurance. The problem is that the system is rigged. Some, through luck, do well. Others make just enough to get by. And then there are those who cannot get ahead no matter what they do.
To Talia Jane, I say keep your head up. Yelp just lost an obviously talented employee. To those who say she is an entitled, whiny millennial: Don’t be so quick to judge. Many of us are one disaster away from living on the streets. Four out of 10 Americans don’t even have $500 in savings for emergencies. It is estimated that 38 million Americans live paycheck to paycheck, not because they want to, not because they don’t have a work ethic, but because they are simply not paid enough. Wages in America have been stagnant since the early ‘70s,
Compensation for the median worker, or the person making exactly the middle of compensation, adjusted for inflation, grew just 8.7 percent between 1973 and 2014, or a 0.2 percent annual rate. Yet net productivity grew at a 1.33 percent annual pace in the same time. Things have gotten even worse since 2000: net productivity has grown 21.6 percent since then, yet inflation-adjusted compensation for the median worker grew just 1.8 percent.
What this means is that just 15 percent of the extra growth workers generated between the early 1970s and the present has translated into higher wages and benefits for them. Since 2000, just 8 percent of productivity growth has gone back to workers.
Corporate profits are their highest ever, and wage growth is near its lowest in half a century. But it is somehow the fault of the workers, like Talia Jane, and a supposed lack of work ethic causing them to not be able to afford the basic necessities of life while working a full-time job. It is not a lack of work ethic. It is corporate greed, and a lack of corporate responsibility causing wealth inequity—and that needs to change.