00:01:35.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:45.540There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:49.320I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:58.820There's a good chance you've heard of Talia Jane, even if you don't recognize her name.0.96
00:02:03.320In 2014, when the country seemed to be having a love affair with crapping on millennials,0.99
00:02:08.520Talia basically became the poster child for the whiny, entitled millennial brat.0.95
00:02:13.320But she also ignited a conversation about the living wage and took on one of the world's0.96
00:02:17.340biggest tech companies, and actually kind of one. My name is Talia Jain. I am a low-wage worker,
00:02:25.740labor activist, and occasional writer. My pronouns are she, they, also. And I live in Brooklyn,
00:02:36.300New York. My social security number, if you give me a click in it. I don't include that.
00:02:43.120wait that's not how this works talia's upbringing was complicated to put it mildly1.00
00:02:50.420when she was a kid her mom got involved in a convoluted criminal plot that left five people0.94
00:02:55.380dead you probably want to know more about that there's a wired profile about her that you can
00:03:00.920find on the episode description i lived my mom was a single mother uh she was working low-wage1.00
00:03:08.020jobs. Um, she was, you know, like a, a secretary. She worked for Marymaids, the cleaning company.1.00
00:03:16.280She did all sorts of stuff like that. Um, we moved around a lot, lived in a lot of
00:03:22.360low-income housing, um, a lot of food insecurity. As soon as I was old enough to read, uh,
00:03:30.100it was expected that I make my own food and do my own laundry and kind of be the parent
00:03:38.400very, very early on. And on top of that, when I was 11, my mom's three best friends were
00:03:49.080arrested for murdering five people, which I, you know, obviously I had
00:03:56.900a response to and issues with but it really spoke to her sort of chronic need to
00:04:06.260be liked by people and to go along with whatever people wanted to secure a sense of like stability
00:04:16.920and friendship which was not translated to me it was not a good environment that I was in
00:04:24.200And when that happened, I went to live with my grandparents in Southern California and I was put in a stable environment for the first time in my life.
00:04:36.720Someone else was making dinner and someone else was doing my laundry and they were very, they were very firm that the only thing I had to focus on was school.
00:04:47.780um and then I bounced around a little bit more between my mom family friends um finally went
00:04:57.040back with my grandparents and then when I graduated high school it was like all right0.73
00:05:03.320because they you know they're from a different generation where it's normal as soon as you
00:05:08.980graduate high school you are out and ideally also married for some reason so on graduation day my
00:05:15.300grandpa walked into my room and he was like, congrats, you have 30 days to find a new place
00:05:19.620to live. Um, and so it's just been a lot of, um, instability, moments of stability that are sort of
00:05:31.260shrouded by this sense that, um, the circumstances that I'm in are not going to last and that they
00:05:42.640are not normal talia took out loans to attend cal state long beach but eventually found herself
00:05:49.040having to decide between going to college and working so she could support herself she chose
00:05:53.680working she found a job lead that sounded promising at the food delivery site eat24
00:05:59.360which was then owned by yelp she'd be starting out with minimum wage which she said worked out
00:06:04.160to about eight dollars an hour after taxes but it was a job and there was talk of her being able to1.00
00:06:09.680to move into a position with better pay.
00:06:12.700This job also meant that she could be closer to her father.
00:06:37.180weeks or two weekends searching for apartments. And I finally found one that was extremely
00:06:44.840expensive, but at a point, like it was month to month. So I figured, you know, I could live here
00:06:50.100and I'll find someone at work to room with and then I can move and it'll be fine. Like it'll,
00:06:57.300it'll all sort itself out. Talia did something a lot of people have done at some point in their
00:07:01.960life, packed up on the hope that what she was leaving for would be worth it when she got there.
00:07:06.340And it was a chance at something that she really didn't get much of as a child living with her mom. Stability. Only that stability never came.
00:07:15.160I wasn't able to find a roommate. I did not get transferred to the position that would have me earning something like a dollar more per hour.
00:07:25.260I was working full-time minimum wage I was living 30 miles away and paying something like
00:07:36.080$11 a day to commute to and from work and very quickly it went from this is difficult but if I
00:07:47.200just keep pushing something will break and it'll be fine to oh this is not tenable I was
00:07:55.040by the time my letter happened I was I hadn't eaten an actual meal in a while
00:08:05.860and I had noticed that my hands were shaking constantly and all I was doing like when I went
00:08:14.040to sleep I wasn't dreaming I would just lay down and then my alarm would go off and I would wake
00:08:18.360up. And I had been doing that for a few weeks. And I had something like $20 or $16 in my bank
00:08:28.800account. I'd gotten into positions where I couldn't afford to get to work because I couldn't
00:08:35.180afford to put money on my clipper card to take the train. And I couldn't afford to pay the toll
00:08:40.820cause I didn't have any cash. Um, and it just, the situation devolved very quickly. And on top
00:08:48.740of it all, I didn't even get to like nurture a relationship with my dad. We got coffee once,
00:08:55.800um, on our birthday, we, we share a birthday and we got coffee for like 15 minutes.
00:09:04.320and I was like cool like that's you know it was not great um yeah it was it was it was a lot of
00:09:15.180like you know when when people read my letter and they responded to it with like oh this girl's so
00:09:20.300entitled you know it's like no I was attempting to create something better and I had been told by
00:09:32.340numerous institutions and people that if I did certain things and if I followed a certain
00:09:40.920playbook and if I worked really hard and threw myself completely into the work and
00:09:48.020dedicated everything of myself to that that things would work out and obviously that is not true
00:09:57.080And I'm not saying that just because of what happened to me, but if we look at, like, the world, that is the whole concept of the American dream and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, like, these things aren't based in reality.
00:10:14.220They are pretty lies that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better for being constantly, chronically in pain.
00:10:23.040One day at work, Talia's boss, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stuhlman, sent out a cheerful all-staff video
00:10:30.140blog, something he did pretty regularly. And something I just have to say, sounds like the
00:10:34.540kind of soul-crushing, semi-mandatory motivational tactic right out of the movie Office Space.
00:10:40.040Seriously, Talia says that one of his vlogs is about how he styles his hair in the morning.
00:10:44.360Hearing her boss speak so cheerfully about her company at a time when she was struggling
00:11:18.520She describes how her co-workers teetered on the brink of homelessness and eviction.
00:11:22.940Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can't even afford to buy food, she writes.
00:11:30.120So walk me through how you were feeling when you wrote that letter in 2016.
00:11:34.040Was there like a moment where you were just like, I am over this?
00:11:38.380Or was it something that was just like a slow burn inside of you?
00:11:41.320so I remember I was standing in my kitchen and I was drinking some water because I had tried to go
00:11:49.420to sleep and I couldn't sleep because I was hungry and so I was drinking water because my
00:11:55.100stomach was cramping and I was waiting for some rice to boil and I noticed that my hands were
00:12:02.660shaking and I suddenly realized that these things that I had started doing drinking water to get
00:12:10.680myself through the 20 minutes it takes to boil rice so that way then I have food in my stomach
00:12:17.140so I can sleep for a few hours while my hands are shaking and like all these things I suddenly0.99
00:12:23.980like zoomed out very quickly and I went oh this is fucked and I was just like holy shit I am0.99
00:12:35.960I'm wait am I allowed to cuss absolutely I was like holy shit I cannot believe I'm in this0.99
00:12:44.760situation and it immediately became clear that I had been doing all of the things that we tell0.97
00:12:53.700ourselves we have to do and I had been putting in the work and I had been making plans a b and c
00:13:01.940to make something happen. But the problem was that I was in a circumstance and in a place
00:13:09.500where none of those things were going to work because the area in the Bay Area has become
00:13:17.640unlivable for people who earn six figures. And yet there are still jobs that pay a minimum wage
00:13:24.180in that area where people have to commute several hours. So then they can live somewhere slightly
00:13:29.660more affordable and they're still failing to get by you know like I suddenly like it all clicked0.91
00:13:35.320together and I was like oh shit I should be earning a living wage and I started typing and I
00:13:43.820thought about saving it as a draft and I remember I like sent a picture to my friend0.79
00:13:51.900of the rice that I was eating with my laptop open I was like I am venting really hard right now
00:13:59.080and the picture was blurry because my hands were shaking from being you know malnourished
00:14:06.760um and I was reading it because usually what I do is I will write something out
00:14:13.120just to get the emotion out and it occurred to me that like
00:14:20.660there were more people that were struggling like if I have it bad there are other people
00:14:29.460at this same job who also have it bad and it's not fair to them to stay silent and to just0.52
00:14:37.420go along with it when it's so clear how fucked up things are and of course there was like a part of0.82
00:14:45.900me I was like they shouldn't fire me though because this is protected concerted activity0.96
00:14:55.760I'm speaking on my circumstances and on the circumstances of my co-workers and demanding0.63
00:15:02.340something better like I'm taking a stand for all of us they would be very ignorant to0.72
00:15:09.160fire me. And then, of course, two hours later, my email got deactivated and I was like, oh,
00:15:18.340yep, I'm fired. And that's when everything blew up. It was read by over two million people
00:15:25.360and less than two hours in hitting published. She was fired from Yelp. Her time at Yelp might
00:15:30.500have been over, but this was just the beginning. It turns out just asking the question of whether
00:15:35.140it's okay for a company based in one of the most expensive cities in the world to be paying staff
00:15:39.520minimum wage was enough to spark a lot of outrage. What was the fallout like after that letter went
00:15:45.100viral? So there was two waves to it. The first wave was people being like, holy shit, this is
00:15:53.700awful. Oh my God. And it was a lot of people in Silicon Valley who were like, whoa, this is huge.1.00
00:16:02.620like the fact that someone said something about yelp paying minimum wage in like to work in san
00:16:11.820francisco one of the most expensive cities in the country that this is a whistleblower and then
00:16:19.760about four days later uh conservative media started to pick up on it because0.98
00:16:28.100their crusty asses are always late. And that was when they were like, oh, she's entitled.0.98
00:16:35.620Like, who does she think she is demanding a living wage? Who does she think she is?1.00
00:16:41.020The responses were really personal and angry. Talia Jane shows that she has a lot to learn
00:16:45.820about adulthood, one headline sneered. Talia Jane, she was a Yelp employee. She went on0.99
00:16:52.420Medium.com, wrote this blog post basically calling out the CEO.1.00
00:16:56.240And yeah, blaming the company that is actually the one that's paying her bills, allowing her to function.
00:17:03.480One of the most popular responses was by Stephanie Williams.1.00
00:17:07.020She wrote that Talia lacked work ethic and that if only she had hustled harder, like getting a second job in the service industry like she did, she could have pulled herself up by her bootstraps.0.98
00:17:18.040Her response made a lot of assumptions about Talia's life,
00:17:21.000like how she was probably able to get support from her family,
00:17:23.720when in reality, that wasn't really an option Talia had.
00:17:26.800After her response to Talia went viral,
00:17:29.780Williams did a series of TV interviews about Talia and entitled millennials.
00:17:34.260Here's Williams' segment from Fox News called The Wussification of America.
00:17:38.300The whole thing kind of sounded very Dickens-esque,
00:17:41.720like, I am so poor, oh my God, I'm so poor.
00:17:44.360But when I got to the end and I realized that she had included a link to her Venmo account and a PayPal account, asking for people to help her to pay rent, I just sat there and was like, you have got to be kidding me.
00:17:55.960After doing a media circuit about Talia, Williams successfully sold a TV show, writing on Medium that her viral rebuttal about Talia's lack of work ethic had been, quote, her golden ticket.
00:18:07.840well the thing that I had trouble with is that she was you know listing all the ways that she
00:18:13.160worked hard but she was also putting it in the context of privileges that I don't have access to0.96
00:18:19.480um she was living at home when she was working she when she lost a job she was able to move back
00:18:28.120home those were not options that I had I like I said like my grandparents were like all right see
00:18:34.180Like, I couldn't, I didn't have a home where I could share the financial burden while getting myself in line, you know?
00:18:45.200The responses to Talia's letter, calling her lazy and entitled or a wuss, reveal a big problem about how we talk about poverty and work in America.
00:18:53.260It isn't always about individual choices or people.
00:18:56.040And while it's great that some folks are able to hustle hard enough out of tough situations, if someone is working a full-time job, they should make a wage they can actually live on.
00:19:04.180And it's not entitled to expect this in America.
00:19:07.400You're not being a wuss by simply posing the question of whether things could be better.
00:19:12.640And having to work multiple jobs just to get by isn't a badge of honor.
00:19:16.900It's a sign that something larger is amiss.
00:19:19.820Obviously, you should not need to work multiple jobs to survive.
00:19:25.600The minimum wage when it was created was enough to cover a family of three.
00:20:01.360After her letter, people combed Talia's social media to prove she wasn't struggling as much as she said she was.0.87
00:20:07.660They found pictures like ones of her eating a homemade roast or ones of her using facial scrub to suggest she was exaggerating her financial situation.0.94
00:20:16.420That, too, reveals a big problem with how poverty is framed.
00:20:20.200It doesn't always look how you might think.
00:20:22.240And we've made it seem like it's justified to question the financial choices of someone who's poor.
00:20:26.340And we expect that someone who's poor should project that poverty at all times.
00:20:30.720You can't be poor and have an iPhone or a laptop or nice nails or eat the occasional good meal.
00:20:36.800And in the age of social media, the problem gets even trickier.
00:20:40.420Everyone knows the reality we present on Instagram is better than the one we actually live.
00:20:44.740So is it reasonable to judge someone's financial situation on what's essentially their digital highlight reel?
00:20:51.000So I think an important thing that people don't realize is that when you're struggling financially,
00:20:56.100you have a limited number of ways that you can release stress to help you get through it
00:21:05.520and for a lot of people that might be drinking or um you know going to the beach or experiencing
00:21:16.240something beautiful as an escape from the ugliness of your day-to-day for me it's cooking0.64
00:21:22.640like I made these banging ass cupcakes from scratch with like candied lime slices or something
00:21:30.920like like and it was a joyous thing for me to be able to escape all the other stuff so that way0.90
00:21:36.540then I can take a breath and get back into it and when we look at these things and say oh well you're0.67
00:21:44.960not really struggling we have to consider the fact that people need outlets to get through shit
00:21:51.900on top of that, social media, we, every single person curates their social media to appear0.83
00:22:01.460better than it is. You never see someone posting a picture of their infant with a huge diaper blowout
00:22:09.800screaming their face off. Even though that happens, you only ever see those little babies
00:22:15.700looking cute and cherubic right like we tailor our social media to present a better version of
00:22:25.720our lives and this happens throughout the you know the financial spectrum what it boils down
00:22:32.920to is why do you feel the need to police other people like why also like why do you need a ton
00:22:41.380of context to justify someone's experience. Like I had a picture of a oven roast that I made and
00:22:52.500people said that it was steak. And I'm like, no, you're just being a cliche. I'm not making fucking
00:22:57.760steak and lobster. It was an oven roast. It costs like $7 and someone else purchased it for me to1.00
00:23:04.940cook for us. But I'm not going to put that context on social media. Because if my family and friends
00:23:12.520found out that other people were buying food, because I couldn't afford a $7 roast, then it's
00:23:18.860going to be like a huge thing. And I didn't want my family to be worried about me. Because they
00:23:24.280don't have the resources to help me. And they would just feel really bad that I was struggling.
00:23:30.100and i didn't want to put that on them like it's just it's just ridiculous like these assumptions0.98
00:23:36.580of of uh feigning poverty or feigning excess or like anything like that like who gives a shit0.98
00:23:46.740if someone on food stamps wants to buy themselves steak and lobster because that steak and lobster0.95
00:23:54.280is the first meal first real meal that they've eaten that makes them feel human
00:23:59.100after months of struggle and houselessness and all these different things,
00:24:05.500if they want to do that, that's their prerogative.
00:24:09.100They're a grown-up, you're a grown-up, act like one.
00:24:13.560I feel like we're all, most people that I know,
00:24:17.260even people who are pretty comfortable,
00:24:18.740are all like one or two calamitous things from not being so comfortable.
00:24:22.660And I knew someone who was living pretty comfortably
00:24:25.360and then, like many folks, lost their job
00:24:28.500And then like many folks lost their health insurance.
00:24:30.540And then like many folks had a health emergency when that person was doing
00:24:34.160comfortably, their car was an older, an earlier model BMW.
00:24:37.800But so many people were like, I can't believe you drive a BMW and you're on,
00:24:42.020you're on WIC for the baby or on food stamps.
00:24:44.320And she was like, what am I supposed to do?
00:24:46.100Sell my car to make you all feel better about me being on food stamps and
00:24:50.200government assistance. Like how would that make sense for like,
00:24:53.680like how is that a choice that makes sense?
00:24:55.160Maybe the point of the matter is that like,
00:24:58.500it's not really your business to make sure that I have what you assume to be the trappings of
00:25:03.920poverty to be, you know, adequately broke down enough that I deserve to eat. I deserve, you
00:25:11.820know, government assistance or what have you. We have this like really fucked up. I feel like it0.99
00:25:18.100probably has roots in that bullshit thing of the welfare queen. I feel like it has roots in that1.00
00:25:26.640where you have to kind of present yourself you have to put on like a performance of your struggle
00:25:35.500for people to believe it's real you're not allowed to have acrylics or nice hair you're not allowed
00:25:45.240to have you know in fashion clothes or things that fit you comfortably and that are clean you can't
00:25:55.480have any of these things. You have to be like dirty, grimy, tattered clothes. Like you have
00:26:03.080to put on this charade for people to be like, oh yeah, you really are struggling. I've been saying
00:26:10.380all of these things, but unless I'm doing the song and dance to make you think that, or like
00:26:16.660to make you believe my reality, it's somehow like, oh, well, what's your personal fault? Like what's
00:26:23.240you're failing. Like if you have a laptop, you're not poor. Like most people in the US
00:26:32.000have a laptop. Also, it's not that hard to purchase a laptop and then put it on credit
00:26:40.720and you're paying like a small amount every single month. It's not hard to purchase an iPhone
00:26:47.980And every single month, you're only paying $20 a month to pay off that phone. Like, you don't see all of the other debts that go into just like maintaining an existence in modern society.
00:27:04.280But because you're seeing the aspects of existing in modern society, you're just going to assume that people are faking it.
00:27:11.420Like, I don't need to walk out in 1932 for you to believe that I am depressed because it was like, you know, the Great Depression.
00:27:23.680Like, I don't need I shouldn't need to be like sepia toned and dusty and like with dingy, dirty nails for you to recognize that earning a minimum wage is not a living wage.
00:27:38.040Right. Why do I need to live in a shack out in the middle of the woods for you to believe that my struggling is valid?
00:27:44.940like we have to really I think examine our biases when it comes to what poverty looks like
00:27:53.200what poverty sounds like and what poverty feels like because so many people they assume certain
00:28:01.260types of people are poor they assume they're poor in certain types of way and that there's nothing
00:28:09.080that can be done because it's their own personal failing. And it's just like a big fuck you to1.00
00:28:16.200all that because it couldn't be further from the truth. These are systemic issues that need0.98
00:28:21.240systemic fixes. And one of the best ways to get started on a systemic fix is to recognize your
00:28:27.920internal personal adherence and enabling of that system and to uncouple yourself from it, you know,
00:28:36.660And then you go through and be like, Oh, I now realize that even though I'm not struggling as hard as someone in a third world country, my struggles are valid. Or I realized that my income does not reflect my value. And I recognize that your income doesn't reflect your value.
00:28:59.980Yeah, so like there's so much that we can uncouple in ourselves.
00:29:02.400And when we do that, we are able to remove the power that these systems have over us and demand better.
00:29:10.060But if we don't do that, it's not going to get better.
00:29:23.580Two months after hitting publish on her open letter, Talia's story faded from the headlines.
00:29:29.420And for as many media outlets ran pieces about entitled millennials like Talia,
00:29:33.840much fewer followed up on the story and the fact that Talia was actually right.
00:29:38.560And that her letter triggered real change.
00:29:42.080Not only did Talia get people talking and thinking about the living wage,
00:29:46.120two months after her letter, Yelp increased pay from $12.25 an hour to $14.
00:29:51.780They increased the number of paid time off days from 5 to 13,
00:29:55.420and they added 11 paid holidays, up from their previous number of zero.
00:30:00.020Even though a Yelp representative told Recode that the company did agree with many of the points in her letter, Yelp still says these changes had nothing to do with her and that they were already in the works.
00:30:12.120Do you think this was in response to your letter?
00:30:17.920So here's the thing is that the city of San Francisco had previously enacted a thing where the minimum wage was set to increase up to $15 by, I think, 2018 or something like that.
00:30:35.680So no matter what, they would have had to raise the wages, but that first bump would have been much less and it wasn't going to go into effect until June.
00:30:46.640so they raise wages more than the bump that they needed to and prior to they needed to do it
00:30:56.040and then they're going to go ahead and claim that it wasn't because of me when at the same time as
00:31:03.640my letter was going viral the customer support managers were having one-on-one meetings with
00:31:09.700all of the customer support staff to gauge how they were feeling and to basically try and prevent0.95
00:31:15.940a mutiny and workers were like yeah it is fucked I'm working full-time I should be making a living0.78
00:31:23.140wage and they were like oh we need to do some changes real quick and then that's when they0.97
00:31:29.200rolled it out like it's obvious they're never going to admit it but it's obvious do you feel
00:31:37.060vindicated no um because the amount that they raised or like the amount that they increased it
00:31:43.740it's still not a living wage. The workers that are working for these tech companies are still
00:31:49.540not earning a living wage. The rental costs in the Bay Area is still unlivable. And there's still
00:31:57.920all this stupid like NIMBY infighting against building housing and capping rental prices and1.00
00:32:06.560all these toxic things occurring in the Bay Area. So people are still struggling. You know, I do feel1.00
00:32:13.080like, it's like, yeah, I was right. But also, the fight continues. Like, we're not done yet.
00:36:01.620So thinking about organizations like Uber and Amazon and Instacart, you know, they're fueled by working people.
00:36:08.740But yet those same people don't really have a loud voice in the conversation about those same companies.
00:36:15.040So what could what can we like? How can we make sure that we're meaningfully centering those voices in conversations about about things like Uber and Amazon and Instacart?
00:36:24.240Pay them to write the articles about the companies. We just have people who, you know, went to journalism school, contacting workers and asking them questions that other like that journalists are thinking of, but that other workers aren't necessarily like the workers know the problem more than a journalist asking questions does.
00:36:46.580I saw especially among COVID reporting early on, so much of the coverage would detail how hard it was at a company for low wage workers. And then every single quote from workers boiled down to essentially quote, like, I'm frustrated and scared. And then there was no deeper dive.
00:37:12.920the best thing I have seen like the best article I've seen about workers in COVID was written by
00:37:22.620an MTA worker who had the piece published I think in the Washington Post and they wrote about the
00:37:30.620terror of seeing people that they saw every day just vanish and die and like these are things
00:37:37.700that you are seeing as you're working in it and you're able to mediate like and like think on
00:37:44.940these things as you're experiencing them. A journalist is just popping into a space and
00:37:49.600being like, hey, how's it going? Good? No? Bad? Okay. And then like that's their story.
00:37:55.000If you want to see these stories reflected accurately, pay the people who live them
00:38:00.180to write about it. Get a good editor who doesn't mind spending a little bit more time
00:38:04.920and nurture the story don't take their voices and and put it into your mouth and then speak for them
00:38:14.900if you knew now all the things that were going to happen if you published your letter would you
00:38:19.480would you do it again that's it yes absolutely i mean it's it's the trolley problem right would you
00:38:31.440uh sacrifice one to save a hundred yeah i don't mind if i'm the one that's fine and i mean i've
00:38:39.900definitely still had issues but the further away i get from it the more obvious it is that
00:38:46.440uh socially and culturally whether people realize it or not if they were to go back and read my
00:38:53.360letter today they'd be like uh yeah obviously duh like we've we've moved into a place where
00:39:00.660what I wrote is like, it's not controversial anymore.