I can’t afford to buy groceries: Yelp fires employee after her letter to the CEO | Hacker News Reader

I can’t afford to buy groceries: Yelp fires employee after her letter to the CEO

qz.com

15 pointsrdoherty8 comments

Man, she's incredibly whiny.

Nearly everyone I know in college (who wasn't a tech or a business major) had to pound the pavement, eat dirt, and figure out some way to just survive after that 4 year "grace period" they were granted after moving out of their parents house.

Many of them went through no end of sometimes degrading, sometimes grueling and outright hazardous jobs -- from waitressing to bike messengering, to construction jobs with mafia-run and/or otherwise dubious contracting outfits, to public school teaching, to sex work. They all talked no end shit (nearly always justified) about their bosses, their sleazy clients, their lousy health insurance, the banks, governmental agencies they had to partially or wholly rely on for some period of time.

But the thing is -- no one ever thought of complaining to these sleazeballs they were working for to say, "hey, why aren't you doing enough for me?" If anything, their attitude was completely the opposite -- instead it was: "Yeah, this sucks, the game is rigged, everybody knows, etc. Man, I need to figure something out."

And eventually, they all did. Whether it was finding non-profit that wasn't secretly capitalistic and exploitive, a public high school that was actually cool to work for, or just learning enough tech skills to get a decent entry-level support job... they all found something. Not because they were lucky, or even simply because they were relentlessly persistent... but ultimately, because they realized it was all up to them.

But thinking that the random person you happen to be slaving away for at the moment -- that they somehow "owe" you more than what they're giving oyou, or that it's they who are holding you back -- that kind of thinking, and more to the point, the refusal to believe in one's own agency and potential -- is far more detrimental and toxic to one's progress than a crummy salary, the outrageous rent, or that long, expensive commute.

While I obviously think people should work a and not blame everyone else for problems, should we accept doing mafia or sex work as normal and just something people have do because they wanted to go to college?

No, definitely not. Also, there are many very legitimate points to be made about how things have gotten worse for younger people in recent years (from rising tuition costs and rents in larger cities, to stagnant wages for unskilled labor), how health insurance still sucks for working people generally, etc. And legitimate discussions to be had about what exactly, on the social policy level, can be done to ameliorate these conditions.

It's just the overall tone of her response, and this mindset of blaming others (even when things do legitimately suck and arguably are unfair) -- instead of looking inward, thinking about how much potential, and more to the point, control over one's destiny that one actually does have (despite the shitty cards one may be holding at the moment) -- that I find to be very unfortunate, and counterproductive.

It's nice to think that the universe is like the comics where all it takes is will power to bend Nature to your desires, but the reality is that if a job doesn't pay at the level of the cost of living that job is pretty much crap. I don't see how you and others like you assert this is a healthy situation for anyone. Especially when I've seen similar situations close to home in Kansas where you're lucky to get paid 10/hr (no benefits). Mind you, the cost of living is much lower than the national average but still 10/hr doesn't go very far in Kansas, especially if you have kids to feed. So, I'm not sympathetic to your "lift yourself up by the bootstraps" mentality when there's not even bootstraps to lift yourself up by. Maybe you can enlighten us poor dumb folk from Kansas how to do this feat sans bootstraps. I'm all ears.

Dear CEO, I've made some bad decisions in my life and it has led me to living in a place with astronomical living costs, and my only being worth $8 an hour on the market. Instead of taking responsibility for my life and my circumstances, I implore you to pay me more than I'm worth. I believe that it's your responsibility to pay me an above market wage, and subsidize my bad decisions. Also, I've made sure to declare this publicly instead of negotiating with HR like an adult would.

Sincerely,

An embarrassment to millennials

"Dear CEO, I've made some bad decisions in my life and it has led me to living in a place with astronomical living costs, and my only being worth $8 an hour on the market. Instead of taking responsibility for my life and my circumstances, I implore you to pay me more than I'm worth."

Dear boona,

Do you think it's okay to pay people below the standard of living costs? Nothing personal but as someone that's worked for nearly a decade in blue collar jobs (manufacturing mostly) I find your callous attitude disturbing. All I can say is that if you think is entitlement then you would be correct; it's justified entitlement that if someone works they know they can survive on that wage beyond the bare minimum. It shouldn't matter if it's in a tech company in the Bay Area or some spray booth at Beechcraft, the wage needs to fit the market which includes the cost of living. If that wage is outstripped by it then that company needs to either acknowledge it and raise the wages or kindly STFU about such letters and take it like professionals (i.e. don't fire people at will).

Yours truly,

A working class millennial.

Person with average qualifications unable to afford outrageously expensive lifestyle. Ok next.

She pretty much listed off every reason I would never ever move to the Bay area. Housing prices are stupid, every food venue is expensive, not to mention I can't stand "brogrammer" culture and I hear that's quite prevalent there from friends who do live there.

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