Yelp Fired a Single Mother Today: Me
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Yelp is a large company with a lot of resources, the way they treated this woman is despicable, especially after a family tragedy like that. It's not like they'll be going out of business if she took some time off to be a human being and care for her family.
I don't use Yelp as I've heard many other negative things about them and don't see a need to, but after reading this, I'll actively avoid them and tell others to.
Also, how is Yelp able to retain salespeople in the Bay Area if they pay only $2k/month? The salary is clearly under the cost of living.
On topic: please don't let all the particularities of this case distract you. The fundamental issue is that she was fired over a short absence due to a serious family emergency, all while ostensibly performing well at her job. That's not acceptable.
So that means ~10% of Yelp's revenue is going to salespeople. Is that normal? Do salespeople normally take 10% of every sale?
Brutal.
The bulk of your comment was about a loan she took out and a low salary!
Quoting: "I do not rely on the state to care for my son."
Not being from the USA and seeign the place this human being is in, it hurt me reading that justification.
Goddamm, that is what state is for! You have been fed all that capitalist bullshit for so long that don't see that another way of living is possible?
Are people waiting for private companies to help them in moments of need? That's what a welfare state is for. Just look at Europe, for all the jokes about french-strikes, taxes, corruption and whatelse we are not as fucked as this.
> took out a loan with 300% interest to move to SF to begin training December 1st at Yelp
> pays $2500 in rent (I make 2k a month so YES, my family has to help and I am so sorry to burden them), pays $1200 a month in daycare
I do not understand.
Why would someone take a loan (at a ridiculous interest rate) to move to a situation with higher rent (let alone cost of living) than salary, especially with kids in tow, especially in a country with at-will employment, especially having just started a new business? What was the upside that would be worth so much stress and risk?
It's quite possible she was sold the position on the basis of "well, in 3-6 months time, we'll reevaluate and get you up the ladder".
She may have seen it as a life-changing opportunity with some risk for a few months.
It annoys me that you are focusing on the things she did "wrong" rather than asking whether Yelp is culpable for some of the blame here.
Is it acceptable for somebody to be fired for wanting to take three days unpaid leave to deal with a loved one in ICU? Never mind the other points she raises: this alone is terrible behaviour.
I also do not understand this when there are many cheap or free options [1] in the US, and most private colleges have excellent scholarship programs (i.e. free rides) for those smart enough, but not rich enough to attend (much better than anything in Europe). Especially when the cost of education has skyrocketed and its payoff is so low - hell, I usually ignore the education part of the CV when hiring.
Having the right to live and study in the US, being eligible for these opportunities is a treasure by global standards (even if some European countries have it a bit better). But that's a separate discussion.
> It annoys me that you are focusing on the things she did "wrong" rather than asking whether Yelp is culpable for some of the blame here.
This position you implied for me, but it was not what I was stating. I am attempting to understand the reasons behind the displayed pattern of decision making (and you indeed provided a plausible explanation), not passing any kind of moral judgment.
[1] quick Google: http://www.thebestschools.org/magazine/tuition-free-colleges...
In Britain it's basically the hallmark of being middle class - politeness, stiff upper lip.
This article does read badly, it sounds irrational, crazy, angry. And that's rational and makes sense.
This needs more context. Is this amount of sales considered incredible, very good, average, below average or significantly below average in Yelp world?
It's one thing if the author was a top-notch performer terminated for family circumstances beyond her control, it would be a different story if she was under-performing, perhaps on internal probation, and termination coincided with a series of tragic family events.
Some companies are known to stack-rank and trim their sales force en masse.
The fact that they didn't would imply that the trouble of keeping her is less than the cost of firing her, which says a lot about the performance of an employee.
There is no 10x or 100x phone web-ad sales person. It's slightly more differentiable than bricklaying. You might be impressively and noticeably better than everyone else, but your greatest asset is being non-differentiable: show up on time, follow your script, go home. When you start costing more expensive people's time your marginal advantage isn't enough to save you.
I keep hearing this phrase here, often as justification for being picky when hiring. As someone who's never run a business, can someone please elaborate a bit about what it costs to fire someone? I thought, at least in the USA, there are really no worker protections. You just say "pack your stuff up and get out".
And this thread is just full of sociopaths blaming the victim. SV culture disgusts me.
>And this thread is just full of sociopaths blaming the victim.
Company culture at Yelp sounds horrible. Tell someone they can come in or get fired over the phone while they are in the ICU is pretty bad. The other stuff mentioned is also bad.
I'm not experienced in sales...but how is this a good deal for the author, nevermind tenable? This, plus the 300% loan she mentions...I wonder what the Yelp recruiting pitch was to her? To give her the benefit of the doubt, it'd have to be that Yelp overpromised on commissions for her to take such a risk.
But Yelp or no Yelp, this is just a difficult situation overall, and one that continues to increase the admiration I have for women who can deal with pregnancy/motherhood and go for a high-pace job, tech or anywhere (how the F did Ada Lovelace manage 3 pregnancies in her day?)...I'd love to hear from other companies -- whether it be traditional ones or established tech companies like Google/Facebook -- about how they've dealt with similar extreme situations, if ever? My conception of Yelp is that it's not doing so hot financially and so, malice or not, has just poorly prepared itself to deal with the author's situation, such that a manager/CEO can justify being abrupt because "it's her, or the overall company". Whereas a much more stable company with all the tech amenities has more flexibility in practicing "humaneness"
You: OK, what could those be?
Yelp: Well, if you work hard, you could be looking at 25% of sales you book, and we'd be expecting you to be doing $15k-$30k of sales a month, so let's take the lower end of that, and assume an additional $45k a year bringing you up to near $70k/year. Whilst you're here you're gaining great experience at a great company
You: Well, currently my life is utter crap and this seems like a good way to provide for my kid given I can't afford to go to school, so, OK...
Now can't you see how this might play out?
Hoodwink enough people and fire them before those 3 months are up, and you've got a sustainable business model there.
- you want to fire them anyways and are just looking for an excuse
- there are recurring issues and this is just the last drop in a bucket - in which case the firing incident could very well be relatively trivial
> I am the single mother who was the top of my class in training for you Jeremy
It does not make financial sense for a company to fire a top employee for missing a day, evil or not.
Real efficiency on Yelp's part would be controlled flexibility. If what we read is accurate then they are losing out because of excessive rigidity.
We can't make employment a zero sum game. Humans are too valuable.
Still, sure there are great companies in the US that emulate perks and benefits that you take for granted in the rest of the western world, but for the most part, I have always felt I've needed to start my own business to rid myself of this craziness and be able to afford myself some basic measure of work/life balance.
On the level of societies, I think a world where everyone would have too much freedom might actually not lead to optimal individual or collective happiness, and I think finding the balance is incredibly complicated.
All that said, I think the relative lack of security and freedom for many people in the US is a travesty and not fitting for a country that puts freedom front and center.
Surely though, the loss of morale from fellow employees over an incident like this is not worth it, unless you want to reinforce some kind of authoritarian workplace where people better keep quiet and stay in line if they want to continue being employed.
DO NOT TAKE OUT A HUGE ASS LOAN. Don't make that mistake. Come on, people.
>I am the single mother who closed two deals with a fever during winter “break” while my co-workers took their days off for fun. I worked through and paced my time off into half days bc I knew I needed to save up my time off.
Why does she care what her coworkers use their time off for? Everyone gets the same amount of vacation and they can use it for whatever they damn well please, that's none of her business.
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it...
Ironically, if I had a family tragedy and asked for leave at the small company I work for that makes very few profits, they'd give me the thumbs up instantly. You'd think the super rich corporations would have an easier time accommodating that, but some of them just refuse if it means a few bucks out of the pocket of John Q Millionaire.
This is precisely why our parents' generation had far more robust unions: they got paid higher wages, and got treated with a lot more dignity over it. Even if unions weren't perfect, they prevent a few millionaires at the top from stomping all over the little people.
And this relationship goes both ways. Employees can treat their employers as replaceable. Although I haven't seen an equivalent loaded word for 'trash' in this scenario.
And there is no reason to believe that the only reason she was fired was because she wanted days off. Based on her own testimony, which is the best version of the events for her, she had many times used leaves to care for her children and put her manager in a 'difficult position'. So she would have been marked as a bad employee.
As for the union. A union of sellers of anything is called a cartel and is illegal, but if it's a union of sellers of labour then it is suddenly the shining beacon of equality. The only real difference is that union of sellers have way more voting power.
This. But I guess working conditions will need to go back to early 20th century ones for people to find out how low can things go without bargaining power.
The statistic 'revenue' is well chosen to support your point, because they also posted a net loss in 2015, and 2013, and 2012 and 2011, all in the order of tens of millions of dollars, so while they have a lot of receipts they don't actually have any spare cash.
Companies, big or small, have some quota of instances where they can engage in charity instead of business (that is, make decisions on the basis of their humanitarian value rather than how much they increase net revenue), sometimes they literally engage in charity outside of the company (sponsoring good causes) and sometimes they engage in charity inside the company.
However, if they exceed their quota, they go bankrupt, and then they are incapable of engaging in any future charity and also everyone who works for them gets fired. Companies who consistently lose money (like Yelp) have a lower quota for charity than companies who consistently post profits.
Performance-based sales in any industry (Internet ads, Yellow pages ads, timeshares, used cars) are known for high pace and high turnover. Companies are quick to hire, but also quick to fire.
If you told the company they were entering a long-term relationship with an employee, and it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of them, the employer would suddenly get very selective, and the candidate would probably have to show years of past sales experience, recommendations from previous employers, go through a few rounds of interviews, etc.
"It isn't relevant to Yelp that she's a single mother". There are so many things wrong with this statement that I can't even begin to answer. To quote something I found yesterday:
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
Of course the company didn't care that my father died. No one outside of my team even knew. But my immediate supervisor did. And he did everything he could to help me get through. Because he's a human, not a corporate drone.
However deep or shallow a company's hierarchy may be, at each level there are discreet human beings.
I'm sorry. :(
> I was immediately offered (without me even asking for) up to two weeks payed leave.
That was really good of them. My hope is that the author (and everyone) will choose to work for a company that would be as good to her as yours was to you.
But a job is just an offer. The employer can't ensure that the offer makes sense for any individual's situation. I personally think Yelp's offer totally sucks, but my situation is different from others', so I look for whether or not they were deceptive or failed to hold up their end of the deal. Were they? Right now I'm not seeing it.
> I look for whether or not they were deceptive or failed to hold up their end of the deal.
Was the way her manager treated her a violation of their agreement? If it was, we should condemn Yelp, or at least that manager. If on the other hand Yelp was acting in accordance with the agreement, why are you talking as if your values should be important in an agreement you aren't a party to?
I guess it comes down to, do you think adults should be able to make deals as they see fit? Or just ones you think are nice?
There seems to be a fundamental assumption that, by paying someone to make sales calls for them, Yelp takes on a sort of overarching responsibility for that person's general well-being.
Is it just because Yelp is a big institution with deep pockets? Aren't the various governments bigger institutions with deeper pockets?
It seems to me much more logical that welfare should come from the state, and that people and corporations should be free to enter into or exit from mutually beneficial economic relationships.
The author proudly states that she doesn't rely on the state to care for her son, but why not? Wasn't she effectively relying on the goodwill of Yelp to care for her son?
Really? The UK provides employment protections for this kind of incident, and we're not the most eager participant in the EU Social Chapter.
As a packer on a zero-hours contract in an Amazon shipping warehouse? I don't know for sure but my gut feeling is "hell no, you'd be let go!"
https://fullfact.org/economy/facts-about-zero-hour-contracts...
I live in Czech Republic, it is post-communist country with protective work law, for example employer must give 3 month notice when someone is fired. Law specify long list of reason for taking a leave (children sick, wedding, funeral, blood donation, even looking for new job)...
But her boyfriend is not dependent on her (and is not even relative). It is very different when children are in hospital.
I worked in the UK for a few years, and have had to take days off with no notice - to attend a funeral, say - and no one even thought about criticising me for it, let alone fire me. That might have been because it was a Japanese company though, I can't really tell.
I also worked in Germany for a while, and a co-worker found himself in a similar position. The company made a point of reminding him that this was not how the rules went before sending him off with instructions not to be back until the situation was resolved.
I don't know which part of EU your friend worked in, but I wonder if your generalisation might not be a bit too broad.
That being said, it's happened in my company and we most definitely didn't fire the person for that. I can see how it could happen, but I don't think it's a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination.
In this case, what we can guess it looked like from her manager's point of view was: she kept taking days off, with excuses that didn't seem to make sense (can't find car keys), and now she wants to take three more days off.
Without trying to blame anyone, I feel bad for her and hope her boyfriend recovers.
Firing a single mom for needing to take time off to take care of someone close to her, especially when it would appear her performance has been at least acceptable (if maybe not her attendance)... right or wrong, it's still a bit of a dick move, wouldn't you agree?
Well, this is protected by law in the US, resulting in a similar guaranteed win if sued, the caveat being "boyfriend" not included under "family".
Taking out a loan at 300% interest while FULL WELL knowing that you can't afford rent (HER ENTIRE PAYCHECK goes to rent!) or basic living necessities AND caring for a family AS A SINGLE MOM is beyond irresponsible.
So while she could do that, it's not always easy to figure out.
Why did she take a job she could not afford - from what I understand she's making a monthly loss of $700 + groceries, gas, etc. Why move to SF, to take a sales job you can't afford? More importantly, a job you knew would be making you an unsustainable loss before you even took it! With a kid in tow this just seems irresponsible.
Now you can talk about career development, the american dream etc. but at the end of the day, you don't take a job you can't afford. Now I'm not saying you can't take a job where you are loosing money so you get experience/references/career opportunities, (here comes that but again) BUT only if you can afford it. Yeah, you missed that "opportunity", but others will come along.
If you don't think you can get into a top school, another way to find a way up the ladder is to find a position at a top start-up you believe will lead somewhere better.
$1k/month for a year whilst building experience is a cheap way to get yourself into a position that might pay $100k/year if you work hard, especially compared to college.
Stop blaming her. Look at how Yelp behaved.