Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and unbost Creative. I'm Bridget Todd,
Speaker 1: and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So this week we heard from labor reporter Kim Kelly
Speaker 1: about the wave of union organizing in the United States
Speaker 1: at places like Starbucks and Amazon warehouses, and it really
Speaker 1: made me want to revisit our conversation with Talia Jane.
Speaker 1: Back in Talia Jane became the post or child for
Speaker 1: quote entitled whiney Millennials for asking for yelp, the company
Speaker 1: where she worked to pay staff a living wage. Her
Speaker 1: story is fascinating and I think it tells us a
Speaker 1: lot about what we can expect from how big tech
Speaker 1: companies treat their employees. So let's listen in to tell
Speaker 1: you Jane versus YELP. There's a good chance you've heard
Speaker 1: of Talia Jane, even if you don't recognize her name.
Speaker 1: When the country seemed to be having a love affair
Speaker 1: with crapping on millennials, Talia basically became the poster child
Speaker 1: for the whiny entitled millennial brat, but she also ignited
Speaker 1: a conversation about the living wage and took on one
Speaker 1: of the world's biggest tech companies and actually kind of one.
Speaker 1: My name is Talia Jane. I am a low wage worker,
Speaker 1: labor activist and occasional writer. UM my pronouns are she?
Speaker 1: They also and I live in Brooklyn, New York. Um
Speaker 1: my social security number. I don't wait, that's not how
Speaker 1: this works. Tally's upbringing was complicated. To put it mildly,
Speaker 1: when she was a kid, her mom got involved in
Speaker 1: a convoluted criminal plot that left five people dead. You
Speaker 1: probably want to know more about that. There's a Wired
Speaker 1: profile about her that you can find on the episode
Speaker 1: description I lived. My mom was a single mother. She
Speaker 1: was working low wage jobs. She was, you know, like
Speaker 1: a secretary. She worked for Marrymids, the cleaning company. She
Speaker 1: did all sorts of stuff like that. Um. We moved
Speaker 1: around a lot, lived in a lot of low income housing. UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of food insecurity. As soon as I was
Speaker 1: old enough to read, it was expected that I make
Speaker 1: my own food and do my own laundry and kind
Speaker 1: of be the parent very very early on. Um. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, when I was eleven, Uh, my
Speaker 1: mom's three best friends were arrested for murdering five people,
Speaker 1: which I you know, obviously I had a response to
Speaker 1: issues with but it really spoke to her sort of
Speaker 1: chronic need to be liked by people and to go
Speaker 1: along with whatever people wanted, UH, to secure a sense
Speaker 1: of like stability and friendship, which was not translated to me.
Speaker 1: It was not a good environment that I was in.
Speaker 1: And when that happened, UM, I went to live with
Speaker 1: my grandparents in southern California, and I was put in
Speaker 1: a stable environment for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: Someone else was making dinner and someone else was doing
Speaker 1: my laundry, and they were very they were very firm
Speaker 1: that the only thing I had to focus on was school. UM.
Speaker 1: And then I bounced around a little bit more between
Speaker 1: my mom, family, friends, UM. Finally went back with my grandparents,
Speaker 1: and then when I graduated high school, it was like
Speaker 1: all right, because they, you know, they're from a different
Speaker 1: generation where it's normal as soon as you graduate high
Speaker 1: school you are out and ideally also married for some reason.
Speaker 1: So on graduation day, my grandpa walked into my room
Speaker 1: and he was like, congrats, you have thirty days to
Speaker 1: find a new place to live. UM. And so she's
Speaker 1: been a lot of UM instability, moments of stability that
Speaker 1: are sort of shrouded by this sense that um, the
Speaker 1: circumstances that I'm in are not going to last, and
Speaker 1: that they are not normal. Talia took out loans to
Speaker 1: attend cal State Long Beach, but eventually found herself having
Speaker 1: to decide between going to college and working so she
Speaker 1: could support herself. She chose work. She found a job
Speaker 1: lead that sounded promising at the food delivery site, which
Speaker 1: was then owned by Yelp. She'd be starting out with
Speaker 1: minimum wage, which she said worked out to about eight
Speaker 1: dollars an hour after taxes, but it was a job
Speaker 1: and there was talk of her being able to move
Speaker 1: into a position with better pay. This job also meant
Speaker 1: that she could be closer to her father. I thought
Speaker 1: this would be a good chance to connect with my dad,
Speaker 1: who lives in the Bay Area and who I never
Speaker 1: really had bunch of relationship with UM. So I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna do it. Like I just opened
Speaker 1: a credit card and I put like moving expenses on there.
Speaker 1: I went up there and spent uh two weeks for
Speaker 1: two weekends searching for apartments, and I finally found one
Speaker 1: that was extremely expensive, but at a point like it
Speaker 1: was month to month, so I figured, you know, I
Speaker 1: could live here and I'll find someone at work to
Speaker 1: room with, and then I can move and it'll be fine,
Speaker 1: Like it'll it'll all sort itself out. Tell you did
Speaker 1: something a lot of people have done at some point
Speaker 1: in their life, packed up on the hope that what
Speaker 1: she was leaving for would be worth it when she
Speaker 1: got there, and it was a chance at something that
Speaker 1: she really didn't get much of as a child living
Speaker 1: with her mom stability. Only that stability never came. I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to find a roommate. I did not get
Speaker 1: transferred to the position that would have me earning something
Speaker 1: like a dollar more per hour um. I was working
Speaker 1: full time, minimum wage. I was living thirty miles away
Speaker 1: and paying something like eleven dollars a day to commute
Speaker 1: to and from work. And very quickly it went from
Speaker 1: this is difficult, but if I just keep pushing, something
Speaker 1: will break and it'll be fine, to oh, this is
Speaker 1: not tenable. I was. By the time my letter happened,
Speaker 1: I was I hadn't eaten an actual meal in a while,
Speaker 1: and I had noticed that my hands were shaking constantly
Speaker 1: and all I was doing, Like when I went to sleep,
Speaker 1: I wasn't dreaming. I would just lay down and then
Speaker 1: my alarm would go off and I would wake up.
Speaker 1: And I would have been doing that for a few weeks.
Speaker 1: And I had something like twenty or sixteen dollars in
Speaker 1: my bank account. I had gotten into positions where I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to get to work because I couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to put money on my Clipper card to take the train,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't have put forward to pay the toll
Speaker 1: because I didn't have any cash. Um. And it just
Speaker 1: the situation devolved very quickly. And on top of it all,
Speaker 1: I didn't even get to like nurture relationship with my dad.
Speaker 1: We got coffee once, um, on our birthday. We share
Speaker 1: a birthday, and we got coffee for like fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: and I was like cool, Like that's you know. It
Speaker 1: was not great, Um, yeah it was. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of like you know when when people
Speaker 1: read my letter and they responded to it with like, oh,
Speaker 1: this girl so entitled, you know, it's like no, I
Speaker 1: was attempting to create something better, and I had been
Speaker 1: told by numerous institutions and people that if I did
Speaker 1: certain things, and if I followed a certain playbook, and
Speaker 1: if I worked really hard and threw myself completely into
Speaker 1: the work and dedicated everything of myself to that that
Speaker 1: things would work out. And obviously that is not true.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that just because of what happened
Speaker 1: to me. But if we look at like the world,
Speaker 1: that is the whole concept of the American dream and
Speaker 1: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, like these things aren't
Speaker 1: based in reality. They are pretty lives that we tell
Speaker 1: ourselves to make ourselves feel better for being constantly chronically
Speaker 1: in pain. One day at work, Talis boss YELPS CEO
Speaker 1: Jeremy Stupelman sent out a cheerful all staff video blog
Speaker 1: something you did pretty regularly and something I just have
Speaker 1: to say. It sounds like the kind of soul crushing,
Speaker 1: semi mandatory motivational tactic right out of the movie office space. Seriously,
Speaker 1: Talia says that one of his vlogs is about how
Speaker 1: he styles his hair in the morning. Hearing her boss
Speaker 1: speaks so cheerfully about her company at a time when
Speaker 1: she was struggling was her breaking point. In true Tali fashion,
Speaker 1: it started with a sarcastic little joke Twitter. She tweeted
Speaker 1: at the CEO offering to edit and watch his vlogs
Speaker 1: if he agreed to pay a living wage. Then she
Speaker 1: wrote him a scathing open letter on medium. If you've
Speaker 1: ever found yourself in an economically precarious situation, her letter
Speaker 1: will probably sound very familiar. It's written with Talius trademark
Speaker 1: dark sarcastic humor, but in it she writes about not
Speaker 1: being able to afford groceries or heat and making rice
Speaker 1: for dinner most days. She describes how her coworkers teetered
Speaker 1: on the brink of homelessness and eviction. Your employee for
Speaker 1: your food delivery app that you spent three million dollars
Speaker 1: to buy can't even afford to buy food, she writes,
Speaker 1: So walk me through how you were feeling when you
Speaker 1: wrote that letter in twenty sixteen, Like what was the
Speaker 1: Was there like a moment where you were just like
Speaker 1: I am over this or was it something that was
Speaker 1: just like a slow burn inside of you? So I
Speaker 1: remember I was standing in my kitchen and I was
Speaker 1: drinking some water because I had tried to go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't sleep because I was hungry, and so
Speaker 1: I was drinking water because my stomach was cramping, and
Speaker 1: I was waiting for some rice to boil, and I
Speaker 1: noticed that my hands were shaking, and I suddenly realized
Speaker 1: that these things that I had started doing, drinking water
Speaker 1: to get myself through the twenty minutes it takes to
Speaker 1: boil rice, is that way. Then I have food in
Speaker 1: my stomach so I can sleep for a few hours
Speaker 1: while my hands are shaking. And like all these things,
Speaker 1: I suddenly zoomed out very quickly, and I went, oh,
Speaker 1: this is fucked. And I which is like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I am, I am wait am. I led to cuss absolutely.
Speaker 1: I was like, holy sh it, I cannot believe I'm
Speaker 1: in this situation. And it immediately became clear that I
Speaker 1: had been doing all of the things that we tell
Speaker 1: our else we have to do. And I had been
Speaker 1: putting in the work, and I had been making plans A,
Speaker 1: B and C to make something happened. But the problem
Speaker 1: was that I was in a circumstance and in a
Speaker 1: place where none of those things were going to work,
Speaker 1: because the area in the Bay Area has become unlivable
Speaker 1: for people who earn six figures, and yet there are
Speaker 1: still jobs that pay a minimum wage in that area
Speaker 1: where people have to commute several hours so then they
Speaker 1: can live somewhere slightly more affordable, and they are still
Speaker 1: failing to get by, you know. Like I suddenly like
Speaker 1: it all clicked together and I was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: I should be earning a living wage. And I started typing,
Speaker 1: and I thought about saving it as a draft. And
Speaker 1: I remember I like sent a picture to my friend
Speaker 1: of the rice that I was eating with my laptop open.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm venting really hard right now, and
Speaker 1: the picture was blurry because my hands were shaking from
Speaker 1: being you know, malnourished. Um. And I was reading it
Speaker 1: because usually what I do is I will write something
Speaker 1: out just to get the emotion out. And it occurred
Speaker 1: to me that like, there were more people that were struggling,
Speaker 1: Like if I have it bad, there are other people
Speaker 1: at the same job who also have it bad, and
Speaker 1: it's not fair to them to stay silent and to
Speaker 1: just go along with it when it's so clear how
Speaker 1: fucked up things are. And of course there was like
Speaker 1: a part of me I was like, they shouldn't fire me, though,
Speaker 1: because this is protected. It concerted activity I'm speaking on
Speaker 1: my circumstances and on the circumstances of my coworkers and
Speaker 1: demanding something better, like I'm taking a stand for all
Speaker 1: of us. They would be very ignorant to um fire me.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, two hours later, my email got
Speaker 1: deactivated and I was like, oh, yep, Bump fired. And
Speaker 1: that's when everything blew up. It was read by over
Speaker 1: two million people in less than two hours, and hitting published,
Speaker 1: she was fired from Yelp. Her time at Yelp might
Speaker 1: have been over, but this was just the beginning. It
Speaker 1: turns out, just asking the question of whether it's okay
Speaker 1: for a company based in one of the most expensive
Speaker 1: cities in the world to be paying staff minimum wage
Speaker 1: was enough to spark a lot of outrage. What was
Speaker 1: the fallout like after that letter went viral? So there
Speaker 1: was two waves to it. The first wave was people
Speaker 1: being like, holy sh it, this is all full Oh
Speaker 1: my god. And there was a lot of people in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley who were like, whoa, this is huge, Like
Speaker 1: the fact that someone said something about Yelp paying minimum
Speaker 1: wage in like to work in San Francisco, one of
Speaker 1: the most expensive cities in the country, that this is
Speaker 1: a whistleblower, and then about four days later, conservative media
Speaker 1: started to pick up on it because their crusty asses
Speaker 1: are always late, and that was when they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's entitled, Like who does she think she is? Demanding
Speaker 1: living wage? Who does she think she is? The responses
Speaker 1: were really personal and angry. Talia Jane shows that she
Speaker 1: has a lot to learn about adulthood. One headline sneered
Speaker 1: Talia Jane. She was a Yelp employee. She went on
Speaker 1: medium dot com where this blog post basically calling out
Speaker 1: the CEO and being yeah, blaming the company that is
Speaker 1: actually the one that's paying her bills allowing her to function.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular responses was by Stephanie Williams.
Speaker 1: She wrote the Tali lect work ethic and that if
Speaker 1: only she had hustled harder, like getting a second job
Speaker 1: in the service industry like she did, she could have
Speaker 1: pulled herself up by her bootstraps. Her response made a
Speaker 1: lot of assumptions about Talia's life, like how she was
Speaker 1: probably able to get support from her family, but in
Speaker 1: reality that wasn't really an option. Tal you head After
Speaker 1: her response to Talio went viral, Williams did a series
Speaker 1: of TV interviews about Talia and entitled Millennials. Here's williams
Speaker 1: segment from Fox News called the Osification of America. The
Speaker 1: whole thing kind of sounded very Dickens esque, like I
Speaker 1: am so poor, Oh my god, I'm so poor. But
Speaker 1: when I got to the end and I realized that
Speaker 1: she had included a link to her Venmo account and
Speaker 1: a PayPal account asking for people to help her to
Speaker 1: pay rent, I just sat there and was like, you
Speaker 1: have got to be kidding me. After doing a media
Speaker 1: circuit about Talia, Williams successfully sold a TV show, writing
Speaker 1: on Medium that her viral rebuttal about Talia's lack of
Speaker 1: work ethic had been quote her golden ticket. Well, the
Speaker 1: thing that I had trouble with is that she was,
Speaker 1: you know, listening all the ways that she worked hard,
Speaker 1: but she was also putting it in the context of
Speaker 1: privileges that I don't have access to. Um, she was
Speaker 1: living at home when she was working. She when she
Speaker 1: lost a job, she was able to move back home.
Speaker 1: Those were not options that I had. I, like I said,
Speaker 1: like my grandparents were like all right, Sea, Like I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a home where I could share the
Speaker 1: financial burden while getting myself in line. You know, the
Speaker 1: response is to Talia's letter calling her lazy and entitled
Speaker 1: or a woose reveal a big problem about how we
Speaker 1: talk about poverty and work in America. It isn't is
Speaker 1: about individual choices. Are people, and while it's great that
Speaker 1: some folks were able to hustle hard enough out of
Speaker 1: tough situations, if someone is working a full time job,
Speaker 1: they should make a wage they can actually live on.
Speaker 1: And it's not entitled to expect this in America. You're
Speaker 1: not being a wolf by simply posing the question of
Speaker 1: whether things could be better and having to work multiple
Speaker 1: jobs just to get by isn't a badge of honor.
Speaker 1: It's a sign that something larger is a miss. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you should not need to work multiple jobs to survive.
Speaker 1: The minimum wage when it was created was was enough
Speaker 1: to cover a family of three, that's two adults and
Speaker 1: a child. Today it cannot cover a single person by
Speaker 1: themselves working full time, and that is the thing that
Speaker 1: we should be discussing. It's not you as an individual
Speaker 1: are failing. It's the system does not want you to succeed.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and We're back. After her letter,
Speaker 1: people cone Callia social media to prove she wasn't struggling
Speaker 1: as much as she said she was. They found pictures
Speaker 1: like ones of her eating a homemade roast or ones
Speaker 1: of her using facial scrub to suggest she was exaggerating
Speaker 1: her financial situation. That, too, reveals a big problem with
Speaker 1: how poverty is framed. It doesn't always look how you
Speaker 1: might think, and we've made it seem like it's justified
Speaker 1: to question the financial choices of someone who's poor, and
Speaker 1: we expect that someone who's poor should project that poverty
Speaker 1: at all times. You can't be poor and have an
Speaker 1: iPhone or a laptop, or nice nails, or eat the
Speaker 1: occasional good meal. And in the age of social media,
Speaker 1: the problem gets even trickier. Everyone knows the reality we
Speaker 1: present on Instagram is better than the one we actually live.
Speaker 1: So is it reasonable to judge someone's financial situation on
Speaker 1: what's essentially they're digital highlight reel? So I think an
Speaker 1: important thing that people don't realize is that when you're
Speaker 1: struggling financially, you have a limited number of ways that
Speaker 1: you can release stress to help you get through it.
Speaker 1: And for a lot of people that might be drinking
Speaker 1: or um, you know, going to the beach or experiencing
Speaker 1: something beautiful as an escape from the ugliness of your
Speaker 1: day to day. For me, it's cooking, like I made
Speaker 1: these Bang and Ask cupcakes from scratch with like candied
Speaker 1: lime slices or something like like, and it was a
Speaker 1: joyous thing for me to be able to escape all
Speaker 1: the other stuff. So that way then I can take
Speaker 1: a breath and get back into it. And when we
Speaker 1: look at these things and say, oh, well, you're not
Speaker 1: really struggling, we have to consider the fact that people
Speaker 1: need outlets to get through ship. On top of that,
Speaker 1: social media, we every single person curates their social media
Speaker 1: to appear better than it is. You never see someone
Speaker 1: posting a picture of their infant with a huge diaper
Speaker 1: blowout screaming their face off, even though that happens. You
Speaker 1: only ever see those little babies looking cute and drubic, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we tailor our social media to present a better version
Speaker 1: of our lives. And this happens throughout the you know,
Speaker 1: the financial spectrum. What it boils down to is why
Speaker 1: do you feel the need to police other people? Like? Why? Also, like,
Speaker 1: why do you need a ton of context to justify
Speaker 1: someone's experience. Like I had a picture of a oven
Speaker 1: roast that I made and people said that it was
Speaker 1: state and I'm like, no, you're just being a cliche.
Speaker 1: I'm not making fucking steak and lobster. It was an
Speaker 1: oven roast. It costs like seven dollars, and someone else
Speaker 1: purchased it for me to cook for us. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to put that context on social media because
Speaker 1: if my family and friends found out that other people
Speaker 1: were buying food because I couldn't afford a seven dollar roast,
Speaker 1: then it's going to be like a huge thing. And
Speaker 1: I didn't want my family to be worried about me
Speaker 1: because they don't have the resources to help me, and
Speaker 1: they would just feel really bad that I was struggling,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to put that on them, Like
Speaker 1: it's just it's just ridiculous, like these assumptions of of
Speaker 1: uh feigning poverty or feigning excess or like anything like that.
Speaker 1: Like who gives a ship if someone on food stamps
Speaker 1: wants to buy themselves steak in lobster, because that steak
Speaker 1: in lobsters the first meal, first real meal that they've eaten.
Speaker 1: That makes them feel human after months of struggle and
Speaker 1: houselessness and all these different things. If they want to
Speaker 1: do that, that's their prerogative. They're a grown up. You're
Speaker 1: a grown up. Act like one. I feel like we're
Speaker 1: all most people that I know, even people who are
Speaker 1: pretty comfortable, are all like one or two calamitous things
Speaker 1: from not being so comfortable. And I knew someone who
Speaker 1: was living pretty comfortably and then, like many folks, lost
Speaker 1: their job, and then like many folks lost their health insurance,
Speaker 1: and then like many folks had a health emergency. When
Speaker 1: that person was doing comfortably. Their car was an older
Speaker 1: and earlier model BMW, but so many people were like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you d have a BMW and you're
Speaker 1: on you're on with for the baby, you're on food stamps.
Speaker 1: And she was like, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Sell my car to make you all feel better about
Speaker 1: me being on food stamps in the government at distance? Like,
Speaker 1: how would that make sense? For? Like, how is that
Speaker 1: a choice that makes sense? Maybe the point of the
Speaker 1: matter is that, like it's not really your business to
Speaker 1: make sure that I have what you assume to be
Speaker 1: the trappings of poverty. To be you know, adequately broke
Speaker 1: down enough that I deserve to eat. I deserve you know,
Speaker 1: government assistance or what have you. We have this like
Speaker 1: really fucked up. I feel like it probably has roots
Speaker 1: in that bullshit thing of the welfare queen. I feel
Speaker 1: like it has roots in that where you have to
Speaker 1: kind of present yourself. You have to put on like
Speaker 1: a performance of your struggle for people to believe it's real.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to have acrylics or nice hair. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to have, you know, in fashion clothes or
Speaker 1: things that fit you comfortably and that are clean. You
Speaker 1: can't have any of these things. You have to be
Speaker 1: like dirty, grimy, tattered clothes. Like you have to put
Speaker 1: on this charade for people to be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you really are struggling. I've been saying all of these things.
Speaker 1: But unless I'm doing the song dance to make you
Speaker 1: think that, you're like to make you believe my reality,
Speaker 1: it's somehow like, oh, well, what's your personal fault, Like,
Speaker 1: what's your failing? Like if you have a laptop, you're
Speaker 1: not poor, like most people in the US have a laptop. Also,
Speaker 1: it's not that hard to purchase a laptop and then
Speaker 1: put it on credit and you're paying like a small
Speaker 1: amount every single month. It's not hard to purchase an iPhone,
Speaker 1: and every single month you're only paying a month to
Speaker 1: pay off that phone. Like you don't see all of
Speaker 1: the other debts that go into just like maintaining an
Speaker 1: existence in modern society. But because you're seeing the aspects
Speaker 1: of existing in modern society, you're just going to assume
Speaker 1: that people are faking it. Like I don't need to
Speaker 1: walk out of nineteen thirty two for you to believe
Speaker 1: that I am depressed because it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: the Great Depression. Um, thank you for that context you Like,
Speaker 1: I don't need I shouldn't need to be like Sepia,
Speaker 1: toned and dusty and like with dingy dirty nails for
Speaker 1: you to recognize that earning a minimum wage is not
Speaker 1: a living wage? Right? Why do I need to live
Speaker 1: in a shack out in the middle of the woods
Speaker 1: for you to believe that my struggling is valid? Like
Speaker 1: we have to, really, I think, examine our biases when
Speaker 1: it comes to what poverty looks like, well pab sounds like,
Speaker 1: and what poverty feels like. Because so many people they
Speaker 1: assume certain types of people are poor. They assume they
Speaker 1: are poor in certain types of way and that there's
Speaker 1: nothing that can be done because it's their own personal failing.
Speaker 1: And it's just like a big funk you to all that,
Speaker 1: because it couldn't be further from the truth. These are
Speaker 1: systemic issues that need systemic fixes, and one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to get started on a systemic fix is
Speaker 1: to recognize your internal personal adherents and enabling of that
Speaker 1: system and to uncouple yourself from it, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you go through and be like, oh, I now
Speaker 1: realize that even though I'm not struggling as hard as
Speaker 1: someone in the third world country, my struggles are valid.
Speaker 1: Or I realized that my income does not reflect my value,
Speaker 1: and I recognize that your income doesn't reflect your value. Yeah, So, like,
Speaker 1: there's so much that we can uncouple in ourselves, and
Speaker 1: when we do that, we are able to remove the
Speaker 1: power that these systems have over us and demand better.
Speaker 1: But if we don't do that, it's not going to
Speaker 1: get better. Two months after hitting published on our open letter,
Speaker 1: tell You a Story faded from the headlines, and for
Speaker 1: as many media outlets rand pieces about entitled millennials like
Speaker 1: Tell You, much fewer followed up on the story and
Speaker 1: the fact that tell You was actually right and that
Speaker 1: her letter triggered real change, not only to tell you,
Speaker 1: I get people talking and thinking about the living wage.
Speaker 1: Two months after her letter, Yelped increased pay from twelve
Speaker 1: to fourteen dollars, They increase the number of paid time
Speaker 1: off to is from five to thirteen, and they had
Speaker 1: eleven paid holidays, up from their previous number of zero.
Speaker 1: Even though a Yelled representative told Recode that the company
Speaker 1: did agree with many of the points in her letter,
Speaker 1: Yelp still says these changes had nothing to do with her,
Speaker 1: and that they were already in the works. Do you
Speaker 1: think this was in response to your letter? Absolutely? Um,
Speaker 1: they'll never tell you that. So here's the thing is that, Um,
Speaker 1: the city of San Francisco had previously enacted a thing
Speaker 1: where the minimum wage was set to increase up to
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars by uh I think or something like that.
Speaker 1: So no matter what, they would have had to raise
Speaker 1: the wages, but that first bump would have been much less,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't going to go into effect until June.
Speaker 1: So they raise wages more than the bump that they
Speaker 1: needed to, and prior too, they needed to do it,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to go ahead and claim that
Speaker 1: it wasn't because of me, when at the same time
Speaker 1: as my letter was going viral, the customer support managers
Speaker 1: were having one on one meetings with all of the
Speaker 1: customer support staff to gauge how they were feeling and
Speaker 1: to basically try and prevent a mutiny. And workers were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is fucked. I'm working full time, I should be
Speaker 1: making a living wage, and they were like, oh, we
Speaker 1: need to do some changes real quick, and then that's
Speaker 1: when they rolled it out like it's obvious. They're never
Speaker 1: going to admit it, but it's obvious. Do you feel vindicated. No,
Speaker 1: because the amount that they raised or like the amount
Speaker 1: that they increased it, it's still not a living wage.
Speaker 1: The workers that are working for these tech companies are
Speaker 1: still not earning a living wage. The rental costs in
Speaker 1: they area is still unlivable, and there's still all this
Speaker 1: stupid like Nimby in fighting against building housing and capping
Speaker 1: rental prices and all of these toxic things occurring in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. So people are still struggling. You know,
Speaker 1: I do feel like it's like, yeah, I was right,
Speaker 1: but also the fight continues, like we're not done yet,
Speaker 1: morn after this quick break, let's get back to it.
Speaker 1: In the last few weeks, workers across industries have been
Speaker 1: speaking at against unfair, racist, toxic work environments. After Matt
Speaker 1: Hunzie at the food publication Bone Appetite tweeted about racist
Speaker 1: workplace practices within the organization, he was put on leave.
Speaker 1: Tally is happy to see more workers, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't have to keep quiet when something bad is happening
Speaker 1: at their job. Every time I see an and letter,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, you're welcome. Like I remember when Medium
Speaker 1: posted like an app update and they in their in
Speaker 1: their debug log, they called it an open letter to
Speaker 1: Medium users talking about talking about like what the update included,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, my legacy. But I do feel like
Speaker 1: people I was. I was early, but I was also
Speaker 1: right on time, I think because obviously I spoke up
Speaker 1: in a very loud and a very um indignant and
Speaker 1: like direct way, which you know you don't usually see.
Speaker 1: You see like leaks from people, uh speaking to media
Speaker 1: off the record or whatever it is, in this sort
Speaker 1: of like closed door method to get the information out there.
Speaker 1: And instead I was like funk that I just got
Speaker 1: all hip post and I think it might not be direct,
Speaker 1: but I think that I did get caught like the
Speaker 1: early part of people realizing that they have the capacity
Speaker 1: to use their own voice and say this stuff out
Speaker 1: loud directly. Um. I'm hesitant to say that I was
Speaker 1: the originator of that, but I do think that people
Speaker 1: can look at it what I said and be like,
Speaker 1: I can do this, but in like a less sarcastic way,
Speaker 1: and and then and they do it, you know, like
Speaker 1: like Hunsie went on, um, you know Matt Hunsie, I
Speaker 1: for b A. He was like, yeah, stuff is racist
Speaker 1: and bad things are bad here. And then they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're putting him on paid leave. And he's like, look,
Speaker 1: they're so afraid of people just saying the thing. But
Speaker 1: if you just say the thing, then it's out there
Speaker 1: and people have to uh reconcile with it. If you
Speaker 1: don't say it, who will, you know. I think a
Speaker 1: lesson that a lot of people take for me is like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have to be really scared of like your social
Speaker 1: media presence and like whatever you post on there, and
Speaker 1: it's like, who gives a ship? I make beautiful cupcakes,
Speaker 1: and I say stuff that needs to be said, Like,
Speaker 1: just say it if it needs to be said, put
Speaker 1: it out there. If you're scared of blowback, do it anyway.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have people who are going to come out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork and be like hell yes, you know,
Speaker 1: like the risk that we create in our minds being
Speaker 1: afraid of like uh, like you know, like for me,
Speaker 1: I obviously am still working low wage jobs. Um, but
Speaker 1: that's like I I used to see it as like
Speaker 1: a punishment, like, oh, I'm never going to have a
Speaker 1: good job because I did this thing and I'm and
Speaker 1: now I'm like there are no good job. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I did the things you say, the thing through the
Speaker 1: thing that's it. So thinking about organizations like Uber and
Speaker 1: Amazon and insta Car, you know they're fueled by working people,
Speaker 1: but yet those same people don't really have a loud
Speaker 1: voice in the conversation about those same companies. So what
Speaker 1: could what can we like, how can we make sure
Speaker 1: that we're meaningfully centering those voices um in conversations about
Speaker 1: about things like Uber and Amazon and insta Car. Pay
Speaker 1: them to write the articles about the companies. We just
Speaker 1: have people who you know, went to journalism school, contacting
Speaker 1: workers and asking them questions that other like that journalists
Speaker 1: are thinking of, but that other workers aren't necessarily like,
Speaker 1: the workers know the problem more than a journalist asking
Speaker 1: questions does um. I saw, especially among COVID reporting early on,
Speaker 1: so much of the coverage would detail how hard it
Speaker 1: was at a company for low wage workers, and then
Speaker 1: every single quote from workers boiled down to essentially quote
Speaker 1: like I'm frustrated and scared, and then there was no
Speaker 1: deeper dive. The best thing I have seen, like, the
Speaker 1: best article I've seen about workers in COVID was written
Speaker 1: by an mt A worker who had the piece published,
Speaker 1: I think in the Washington Post, and they wrote about
Speaker 1: the terror of seeing people that they saw every day
Speaker 1: just vanish and die, and like, these are things that
Speaker 1: you are seeing as you're working in it, and you're
Speaker 1: able to mediate like and like think on these things
Speaker 1: as you're experiencing them. The journalist is just popping into
Speaker 1: a space and being like, Hey, how's it going good? No, Dad, okay,
Speaker 1: and then like that's their story. If you want to
Speaker 1: see these stories reflected accurately, pay the people who live
Speaker 1: them to write about it. Get a good editor who
Speaker 1: doesn't mind spending a little bit more time and nurture
Speaker 1: the story. Don't take their voices and put it into
Speaker 1: your mouth and then speak for them. If you knew
Speaker 1: now all the things are going to happen, if you
Speaker 1: published a letter, would you would you do it again?
Speaker 1: That's it? Yes, I mean it's it's the trolley problem, right,
Speaker 1: would you, uh sacrifice one to save a hundred? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't mind If I'm the one, that's fine. And
Speaker 1: I mean I've definitely still had issues. But the further
Speaker 1: way I get from it, the more obvious it is that, uh,
Speaker 1: socially and culturally, whether people realize it or not, if
Speaker 1: they were to go back and read my letter today,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, oh, yeah, obviously, Uh, like we've we've
Speaker 1: moved into a place where what I wrote is, like,
Speaker 1: it's not controversial anymore. Tell you us right, For all
Speaker 1: the hate she got for her letter, by a wide margin,
Speaker 1: Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage. Two
Speaker 1: thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to fifteen
Speaker 1: an hour, including who say they strongly favor that kind
Speaker 1: of increase, according to a twenty nineteen Pew Research Center survey.
Speaker 1: So we'll tell you to be remembered as someone who
Speaker 1: was an early adopter that most people now agree with.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you'll be remembered as a whiney,
Speaker 1: entitled millennial or someone who amplified the conversation around living
Speaker 1: wages and actually made tangible change. I think both. You know,
Speaker 1: Senator Ben Sas in his book he called me an
Speaker 1: entitled millennial, and that book is going to be on shelves,
Speaker 1: you know, and certain people are going to choose to
Speaker 1: read that. He said, Um, what was this quote? Uh?
Speaker 1: The founding fathers would panic at the survivability of the
Speaker 1: nation if we were to have too many ms Janes.
Speaker 1: Think about that. A sitting senator says that there were
Speaker 1: too many people like tell you, our country might not
Speaker 1: have been able to survive. But what she did was
Speaker 1: actually see a problem in her country, and at great
Speaker 1: risk her own comfort and stability, asked why couldn't it
Speaker 1: be better? What's more patriotic than that? If you're looking
Speaker 1: for ways to support the show, check out our work
Speaker 1: store at tangodi dot com. Flash Store. Got a story
Speaker 1: about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
Speaker 1: say hi. You can reach us at Hello at tangodi
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
Speaker 1: at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet was created by me Bridget pad It's a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative edited by Joey pat
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our
Speaker 1: produc and sound engineer. Michael Amata was our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
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Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.