Talia Jane was a big name for about eight seconds a couple of years back. If you don’t remember the name, you may remember the story: Jane was fired from Yelp after she penned an open letter to Yelp’s CEO complaining about her wages.
Now, Jane is back with a piece in the New York Post titled “Complaining about low pay online ‘destroyed my life.’” Her article illustrates she learned nothing from any of the criticism she vehemently loathes.
“I was labeled an entitled millennial fraud. Pundits tore me down,” Jane wrote. “Michelle Malkin at the National Review took note of a $6 face scrub I had posted on Instagram, saying I was ‘indulging in a spa day with a fashionable face mask.’ She also declared that she read my ‘screed’ to her teenage children ‘as an object lesson in how not to be a grown-up.'”
However, Jane doesn’t deny that no one needs face scrub. Malkin’s criticism — that she was spending money on frivolous things while lamenting her low wage and supposed inability to buy food — stands, of course. People all over the country must find ways to feed the whole family for six dollars.
Throughout the new article, Jane describes how she has made one bad decision after another. With no college degree, she had moved to San Francisco — a city with perhaps the most expensive cost of living in the nation — and then took an entry-level job. She apparently then chose to live alone, rather than find roommates to share expenses. As a result, she had a lot of expenses to pay for with her minimum wage job at Yelp. That’s when she tried to publicly humiliate her boss, and was fired.
She says she then relocated, which was a smart idea. But she moved to equally expensive New York City, a terrible idea.
She laments that her open letter has made it difficult for her to find work. She recounts having to explain why she was fired on a job interview, and how it changed the interviewer’s opinion of her. No kidding.
She claims she’s now working 16-hour days trying to make ends meet — proof, she argues, that she has a good work ethic — and says she has no regrets over her actions. Jane simply does not acknowledge that she bears any fault, rather than all the fault, for her position.
How does she not see that her current work ethic was lacking in San Francisco?
Look, working for minimum wage sucks, but almost everyone does it when starting out. Almost everyone finds roommates or some other living situation that makes your wages stretch. And no one calls out the CEO, showing no appreciation for the job opportunity at all or the others outside struggling to find one.
I’ve been dirt poor, and I was dirt poor not too long ago. In fact, I was dirt poor when I read Jane’s original post, and I had just as little sympathy for her then as I do now. She made her bed and then refused to lie in it. Instead, she simply wanted someone to make her a new, better one.
I think she does have regrets: she regrets that people won’t just shut up and do what the spoiled millennial says.
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