D: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining me for this really weird video. I already don't know how we're going to title it.
D: It's gonna be like an interview conversation thing. I'm Daniel O'Brien, this is Talia Jane
D: You've written a couple articles for us here at Cracked.
D: You can find them on the website, they're great.
D: But you also wrote something else about a year ago that you published on Medium about your job at the time which was Yelp.
D: D'You want to run that story by our viewers?
T: So, about a year ago I wrote an open letter to my CEO at Yelp because all my co-workers and I were struggling despite the fact that we were working full-time
T: And I realized that it wasn't normal. We had people who were either homeless or on the brink of homelessness.
T: We had people who couldn't go to the dentist because they couldn't afford the $20 copay, despite the fact that we had full benefits, and they they couldn't pay us a living wage.
T: So, I reached out to my CEO after reaching out to my managers and establishing a consensus with my co-workers that all of us had asked our managers for a raise,
T: and I said, like, we need to get paid a living wage because this is bogus
D: Two things happened directly from Yelp out of that. You were laid off,
D: I think, the day that it went up? T: Two hours. D: Two hours after.
T: I wasn't even at work, and they fired me. D:The other Yelp change that happened is they raised their wages, is that right? T: Mhmm. They improved working conditions.
T: They - instead of everyone just being assigned a different desk every time they came into work, people got their own desks.
T: Which is great because before everyone would - ,like, if one person had a cold, everyone would get a cold.
D: The kind of place would have been a better working environment for you, had you not been fired to make that working environment possible?
T:Yeah, exactly. D:The other thing happened someone,
D: a 29 year old writer,
D: wrote a response to your post that also went kind of viral because you - they turned you into this sort of...
T: Monster. D: Monster, yeah. This is, like, this is - they decided this is everything that's wrong with Millennials and
D: this woman just came after you, that you weren't working hard enough, and everything was was your fault,
D: and you should have taken a cue from a person like her, who worked really hard at a waitressing job and
D: and made enough money to live well.
T: A waitressing job that she was given by a family friend.
D: For an essay that is all about how you don't have a strong work ethic, and you don't work hard enough,
D: she walked into a bar that was owned by a family friend and started complaining,
D: and the family friend walked away and came back and was like 'you have a job now'.
T:Yeah, D: and- and then she- she certainly did work hard at her job and like I've waited tables and bar-tended,
D: we all have, I think we
D: have both at different times been dishwashers, so, like, you can respect that she worked hard to make a good living for herself, and
D: it was as a
D: friend and
D: pseudo boss-man of yours, it was hard for-
D: for all of us, really, to watch the internet has just decided 'Yes!
D: This is what's-
D: This is what's wrong with America right now. Good 'millennial' and bad 'millennial' ' and no one was taking the time to really go through
D: both of those articles to see that there's nuance to be had- T: Yeah. D: -everywhere, and now we're at the present,- T: Yes
D: -and there's a senator named Ben, Sasse who wrote this book
D: 'The Vanishing American Adult'. At about page 126 our guy, Ben Sasse, in his awesome book,
D: wrote about Millennials not working hard and
D: he told a story 'So, sometimes stories like these capture the public attention and go viral. In 2016, Talia Jane,
D: a 25 year old customer service rep at Yelp's e-24 delivery service, caused a sensation when she wrote a long letter of complaint to her
D: CEO'. He doesn't like you and he- T: Sounds familiar
D: Specifically calls you out for not working hard,
D: and then he holds up the woman who wrote the response to you as, like, like he agrees with
D: the internet a year ago, which no one should ever do and he was saying that
D: she was the good one, and you were the bad one. Basically what everyone was saying last year and
D: Here's some quotes that I hate that he said. He said 'Reading this woman's words,'
D: (This is the the one he likes)
D 'You hear in your head parents across the nation breathing a sigh of relief and whispering 'praise her parents
D: we need more of that'. Some parents may also nod their heads in hearing that Talia Jane was quickly fired from her job.' Which, it's-
T: Her parent, I would- that's a head noddable. D: Yeah. Everyone loves when people get fired, who are already struggling like that, especially
D: senators. Definitely put that out in the world, good luck with your presidential run
D: plotting when people get fired. 'Our founders would recognize Ms ***** and they would
D: panic about the survivability of a nation if we have too many Ms. Janes'
T: Start panicking D: Yeah. Now, these are some pretty damning things that he said about you. T: Yeah D: So, I'm just curious
D: What was your reaction when he reached out to you?
T: Well, Dan, this might surprise you but the senator, who may potentially run for president and wrote a book on a whole thesis
T: that smears me, did not actually reach out at all- D: Get out of town T: -to get any sort of fact-checking in
T: whatsoever D: That's, uh,
D: that's pretty interesting, I think. We do research at Cracked all the time because were not allowed to publish lies
T:Fun fact, so, because he is a senator and because the book is published
T: It's considered fair criticism, and he's protected from Libel laws- D: Oh, nice
T: -because he's a high-ranking government official, so, I just- so any senators or anyone out there
T: who's a high-ranking government official: if you want to talk sh*t about me?
T: Get it published, and you'll be great
D: He, uh,
D: We keep calling him a senator
D: but a thing that he calls himself in the book that he takes great pride in is - uh - he thinks himself as an historian first and
T: Of course he does D: as someone who has published two history books, I'm not allowed to do any of the
D: not reaching out to living sources when I'm talking about them kind of business. Like, my publisher would be
D: really mad if I was like 'Yeah, I
D: wrote an entire section based on a half understood, half read
D: article that someone else wrote about Talia Jane. Is it cool if we just publish it?'
D: They'd say no and also I wouldn't do that because I-
T: You're a human D: research my shit and I'm human being and
D: another thing that I
D: don't wanna come- again,
D: I don't want to come down too hard on this other writer (by which I mean the other woman not Ben Sasse, who I'm going
D: to come down real hard on)
D: I get the sense that when he decided to hold you up as the example for everything that's wrong in America right now
D: he didn't read the full thrust of your piece, certainly, because he would have seen how hard you worked and how
D: real your struggle was, and
D: that you're a good per- like, no one could read that and think 'oh yeah,
D: this is this is the person this is the best example'. Like. he would just move on, because you're not an entitled fraud Millennial.
D: He also, I don't think, read all of your
D: opponent's piece, because one of the quotes in hers that
D: really stuck out to me is, she's talking about struggling being a waitress in New York, and-and
D: having a hard time getting by and like seeing all of her
D:classmates
D: thriving and doing better than her.
D: She wrote the quote "I dealt with the pitying looks of my former classmates and their parents when they would see me at the hostess
D: stand, laughing to myself knowing their child was addicted to coke". Which is- had he read that,
D:I doubt he would have
D: Held her up as the one that the founding fathers would recognize while panicking over you T: Yeah
D: so one of the things that was very clear to me when people were vilifying you on the internet is that
D: ninety percent of people were in agreement that you were bad, and I would also say that
D: ninety percent of people
D: likely didn't read either of these
D: open letters. They read articles describing them with certain pulled quotes because that's just sort of the vibe that everyone was pulling out.
D: No-one could have read your whole piece
D: about your struggle in very real terms and
D: walk away thinking you were a villain. And I think that's pretty clear that Ben Sasse did the exact same thing, that he didn't read
D: Your letter or the other letter, but found some
D: angry
D: 'national review'-style blog that was like 'Do you see this millennial fraud?
D: *sound of annoyance* here's a single out of context quote that makes you seem very bad, and did you see this perfect angel?
D: here's a pulled quote that makes you seem good', and that's a kind of research and due diligence
D: we can expect from a guy who's helping shape our laws T:Yeah
D: Hey everyone, thank you for watching that weird video. Click the big C in the middle to subscribe. Click any of the videos in
D: the boxes around us to watch those videos. Click the stupid YouTube bell, that'll give you notifications whenever we make a new video, and,
D: Talia, you're very funny on Twitter. Where can people find you? T: Just type in Talia Jane. Good luck
D: Sounds good. Alright!