A screenwriter has written what she described as “an open letter to millennials” after a 25-year-old Yelp employee complained about not having enough money, and subsequently getting fired.
The open letter also comes soon after a millenial battled with her uncle on Facebook over the idea of “free stuff” like college.
The Yelp employee, Talia Jane, wrote an open letter published on the Medium blog in which she told him she made so little money that she primarily ate rice while at home.
She said rent is so expensive in the San Francisco area that she pays $1245 a month. After that and $11.30 a day for transportation, she’s not left with much on a salary that pays her $1466.48 a month.
While Jane has garnered some sympathy for her struggle to stay afloat, others have lambasted her for trying to call out the CEO when she could leave and get another job whenever she wanted.
Stefanie Williams, a 29-year-old screenwriter, was one of Jane’s harshest critics, saying in her own open letter that complaining about “wage issues is utter [expletive]” and decrying Jane’s “concept of work ethic.”
Williams wrote that she was fired from her first office job, also her first post-college job, at the age of 22. Instead of sitting at home and crying, she said, she got a job as a hostess, and worked her way up to a cocktail waitress, then a bartender.
Thanks to her hard work, Williams said, she was able to move into the city and also afforded enough free time to write. At the age of 26, she signed to United Talent Agency in LA.
“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,” Williams wrote to Jane.
“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.”
Confronted by a message that she should take it easier on Jane, Williams said her lack of compassion wasn’t about Jane’s plight but about her “poor decisions” and “begging.”
She also insisted that Jane, who has received thousands of dollars from GoFundMe donations, should have no problem securing employment considering she is “healthy, capable, white, degree holding and fluent in English.”
