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Back In The Race: An Employee's Yelp Catches A Company With Its Tail Between Its Legs

So someone makes a decision based on incomplete or misleading information -- most law students and young lawyers should sympathize with this....

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resume girlA few days ago, a young woman calling herself Talia Jane became internet famous when she wrote a public letter to the CEO of Yelp, complaining about her minimum-wage customer support job at Yelp and how it is not enough to cover her food and living expenses in San Francisco. She claims that all of her co-workers are similarly struggling. The situation is so bad that her entire department raids the company snack pantry and even goes to other floors to find something to eat. Soon after the letter was published, it went viral and she was fired soon after.

I see rant posts like this on occasion. Most are like law review articles in that only friends, family, colleagues and overworked cite-checkers read them. But the internet gods picked Talia’s letter to be the viral post of the week. Maybe it resonated with a lot of people in similar situations. Perhaps most people thought that Yelp was one of those progressive tech companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google, where all of their employees work in spacious, modern offices with recreation rooms, cafeterias with dishes from five continents, and other awesome fringe benefits.

The response to the letter was mixed. One group of people criticized Talia’s poor choices and called her the poster child of entitled millennials. Some even tried to discredit her story of starvation by exposing photos she posted on Instagram and Twitter showing her with all kinds of food.

Others saw this as an act of courage, exposing the epitome of economic inequality and exploitation, particularly in liberal San Francisco.

Most of Talia’s critics claim that she made bad choices. It was her choice to choose a job that paid minimum wage and it was her choice to live in an expensive city. But according to Talia, it was only after she accepted her job and moved into her expensive apartment that she was told she had to work in support for an entire year before being able to transfer to a different department.

So someone makes a decision based on incomplete or misleading information. Most law students and young lawyers should sympathize with this. I’m sure most young lawyers know someone who worked at a firm where the employer promised a significant salary increase after a probationary period. And of course, just before the probationary period ends, the employer lays them off, usually citing “performance reasons.”

Critics also claim that she could have chosen to quit if she hated her job so much. Really? Talia is already hungry. Quitting on a whim will not only increase her chances of death by starvation but will also increase her chances of dying homeless. These people make it sound like quitting a job is as easy as quitting a gym membership.

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Others say that the struggle builds character and that it makes you appreciate the things you already have. These people tend to support this statement by humblebragging about their own personal experiences of working at crap jobs and providing anecdotal evidence of others who have done the same. I would like to ask these people something.

Do you recall those initial years of struggle when you were young? Remember when you got back to your apartment from your second job at 1 a.m. after dealing with the 99th rude customer? You were tired and you go straight to bed. But before you fall asleep, you remember to set the alarm clock at 6 a.m. so you can wake up and get ready for your first job. Rinse and repeat. Do you also remember when you look at your bank statement every month and you realize that even after working two jobs six days per week, cutting coupons, not going out, and shopping at the local Salvation Army, you have no savings after expenses?

I know that you now look at those years as some kind of defining moment and accomplishment in your life to be proud of, but back then you probably did not think that way. You probably felt the same way Talia did. Would you want your kids to go through the same struggle?

If you don’t recall any of those moments, then you are Privileged Pierce. Be thankful that you have family that helped pay your way.

There are some takeaways that lawyers can learn from Talia’s experience:

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First, get as much information about the job as possible before accepting the offer. Check the job turnover rates and local housing costs.

Second, don’t bite the hand that feeds you, even if it gives you only stale bread crumbs and water. Continue to do your work diligently but plan an exit strategy. Don’t burn bridges. At the very least, make sure you qualify for unemployment benefits.

One thing is for certain. Because of this, Yelp will change its ways. They announced that they will move the support positions to Arizona, where the local employees will be paid the same wage in an area with lower cost of living. But something tells me that it is only a matter of time before these jobs are outsourced to a different country.

I get solicited frequently from Yelp’s sales representatives who pitch me on how I will get more calls from potential clients if I sign up for their pay services. Before reading Talia’s letter, I thought they were annoying, commission-seeking blood suckers using every hard-sale tactic in the book.

After reading Talia Jane’s letter, I looked through my past emails from Yelp’s sales representatives. I Googled their names and saw their Linkedin profiles. All of them were based in San Francisco. Many of them were young people with little or sporadic job histories. Some relocated from other cities as Talia did. Others worked for startups that fizzled. So they are probably working at Yelp’s sales division with the hopes that something better will come along. Sounds a lot like contract document review.

I still think they are annoying, but now I empathize.

I can see how Talia came off the wrong way and I can’t completely blame Yelp for firing her. But it is too easy to blame everything on her. She was not let go for performance reasons. Reasonable people would think that she was fired for exposing an inconvenient truth.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.

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