Woman Fired After Complaining to Yelp CEO About Salary Gets Open Letter From Fellow Millennial — and It’s Brutal

A 29-year-old writer in New York published a scathing open-letter directed at a 25-year-old woman who complained last week about her salary in an online post to Yelp's chief executive.

Stefanie Williams turned to Medium to post a brazen message to Talia Jane, the Yelp employee who was fired from her job hours after she publicly went after Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman over her entry-level salary.

Stefanie Williams (Image source: Twitter)

Titled "An Open Letter to Millennials Like Talia," Williams hit Jane hard.

"It sounds like you’ve hit some real post Haitian earthquake style hard times, so maybe some advice will help while you drink the incredibly expensive bourbon you posted on your Instagram account and eat that bag of rice, which was the only other thing you could afford!" she wrote.

Williams explained how she worked her way up from being a restaurant hostess to a television screenwriter, detailing the times old classmates belittled her and how she was forced to miss holidays.

"Long hours, lots of stress, I smelled like bad citrus and stale beer most of the time, I had to miss Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Years Eve with my family and friends, but I jumped at the opportunity," she wrote. "And all of a sudden, after about a year, I was making enough money to live. And after several years, I was making enough money to live well."

She continued:

Had you ended your whole whining disdain about full health coverage and expensive copays by saying you had taken a job at Starbucks, or a waitressing job in order to make money while you were on the search for a new job that requires the basic knowledge most teenagers with a Twitter account hold these days, I’d have maybe given you credit. Saying you moved in with several roommates to cut costs, tried to budget in a way that was more practical, and applied for jobs that were more about salary and growth than bragging rights and trends, I’d say hey, she’s making an effort. But you are a young, white, English speaking woman with a degree and a family who I would assume is helping you out at the moment, and you are asking for handouts from strangers while you sit on your ass looking for cushy jobs you are not entitled to while you complain about the establishment, probably from a nice laptop. To you, that is more acceptable than taking a job in a restaurant, or a coffee shop, or a fast food place. And that’s the trouble with not just your outlook, but the outlook of so many people your age. You think it is somehow more impressive to ask strangers for money by writing some “witty” open letter than it is to put on your big girl pants and take a job you might be embarrassed by in order to make ends meet. And as someone who not only took the “embarrassing job”, but thrived at it, made bank from it and found a career path through it, I am utterly disgusted by your attitude.

Williams contended that "work ethic is not something that develops from entitlement."

"Quite the opposite, in fact," she wrote. "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.

She concluded that "there are far more embarrassing things in life than working at a restaurant, washing dishes, or serving burgers at a fast food window."

"And one of them, without one shred of doubt, is displaying your complete lack of work ethic in public by asking for handouts because you refuse to actually do work that at the ripe old age of 25 that you think is unworthy of your witty tweet creating time," Williams wrote.

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