This is a post spurred by Stefanie Williams piece regarding Talia Jane’s open letter. I second that Stefanie!!
Stefanie Williams, I cannot agree with you more, Talia Jane needs to work. Everyone needs to work. The only way you get anything is to work for it. Why is it so hard for people to understand. I am 4 years older than you. I admit, I had a lot of things handed to me but even if you have something handed to you, it is up to YOU to do something with it. Someone handed me a college application, it was up to ME to fill it out. Once I was there I quickly learned I was not at home, I had no access to a bank account, no parents credit card, no car, nothing. I had a meal plan and $300 my dad left me with when he dropped me off and that was okay for freshman year. In freshman year, you are still interested in going home to see your high school friends chance you get but once you embed yourself in your new college life you realize the assistance you get from your parents is not going to fly. Why? I wasn’t home eating out of my parents refrigerator, driving their car with gas they paid for, having them take me shopping, I’ll stop now, but I could go on.
I would say it is about sophomore year when you realize you want to go out, you want a new outfit, you want to do fun things…which all cost money. I for one didn’t have the balls to call my dad and say, “Hi Daddy, can you send me your hard earned money so I can go into a bar, underage and drink $1 drafts of Rolling Rock? Also, I would like to spend the bulk of the money I need for ‘food’ on a pair of Citizen of Humanity Jeans from Nordstrom.” Now, I am an only child, daddy’s girl and even I knew that wouldn’t fly. So you know what I did? I got a JOB! I didn’t have a car so I looked for work on campus. I also, didn’t qualify for work study so I trolled around to everyone and anyone I could find asking about work. Finally, I got a job at the Dean’s office of Engineering (AKA most fun, upbeat place in the word) delivering mail from building to building and answering the phones. It was so gratifying and fun. It blew, but it was the extra money I needed. I was taking 21 credits and working. Then I was given the opportunity to keep the job for the summer which I jumped at because I needed to take some classes. While all my friends who worked at restaurants & were going to the beach during the day, I was waking up at 7am to be at class at 8 and work at noon. My best friend worked at a restaurant and we rented a room for the summer in a FRAT HOUSE…worlds most disgusting place. You know why we did that? We did it because it was what we could afford with minimal parental help. Our parents could have helped us and probably did since we were only 19 years old but we did not rely on them. We figured that if we worked hard it would pay off. It did.
I graduated on time and 3 weeks out of college I was offered a job at an advertising agency. I lived at home with my mom because there was no way I was going to afford living in NY or NJ on my own. Then I decided to move back to Rhode Island (where I went to college) and move in with my best friend. I had saved money and figured I would take any job I could find to stay afloat. I worked at a daycare for about 6 months until I found a temp marketing job. I remember talking to my best friend, telling her how I hated it and it is not what I want to do but if I want career growth THIS is the time I have to really work hard and put in effort. She agreed. That is how we survived. We put in effort. We joked that being poor was fun and even funny. Sometimes we were really down and found it hard to believe that there would ever come a time when we weren’t living paycheck to paycheck. It was hard, but it taught me how to budget. I ate a lot of eggs and frozen vegetables we drank beer, only what was on sale and never once splurged on anything like Burbon. We shopped at forever 21 and would look for quarters on the ground so we could do our laundry. We laughed about it but we knew that the only way out was to work for it.
It seems like Talia Jane and a lot of others are suffering from this “but I think I deserve it so I should get it” bull shit epidemic. These people are not that much younger than me are really missing the point. You don’t get rewarded for just simply participating. You have to play the game. You have to work and you have to pay your dues. You HAVE to do this in order to learn to respect yourself, respect what you have and be grateful & thankful. You cannot expect to get a raise just because you show up. You have to earn it. Just like when you are in first grade, you have to earn your gold starts…you just don’t get them because you asked for it. How come all this common sense is escaping so many people?
Anyway, I commend you, Talia Jane and your great big, passive aggressive balls to write an open to your CEO but what did you expect from that?
It looks to me like you took a chance, a very stupid chance. Instead of working for a raise you thought it would be easier to write an open letter and either get a raise for absolutely NO reason at all or get let go an hope for a severance? I hope that you see how ridiculous that was. Now, get your head out of your ass and work for what you want.
Stefanie Williams response to Talia Jane
Talia Jane’s Open letter to Yelp CEO
I’m pretty sure no one reads this blog but if you do read it and like it, let me know. If you don’t like it, you can still let me know. For my mom, I wrote this on my phone so please excuse spelling and grammatical errors.
A Little Burdi Told Me 
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