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I’m sure that you’ve at least heard about the Eat24 employee out in San Francisco who wrote an open letter to her CEO on Medium, expressing her distaste for the company’s negligence in supporting her financially.
When I started reading the article, I immediately sympathized with her. After all, as human beings, we’re conditioned to side with the underdog– someone who’s up against the system. You want to root for them.
But the more I read, the more I began to lose my stance on supporting her. Her ridiculously transparent feedback on a public forum turned more into a rant about a company that she decided to work for. A company that led her to decide to live in San Francisco (arguably one of the most expensive places to live in the US). A company that she was just using as a launching pad to another point in her career.
I began to realize this wasn’t really the company’s fault– it was more of her falling victim to the system and the unfortunate realities of working entry level while trying to live in the Bay area. And she was just complaining about it.
Well, Yelp (the parent company of Eat24) was quickly enlightened and she was promptly fired. To salvage some sort of monetary gain from all this, she added links to her PayPal, Venmo and Square accounts to the end of her viral Medium blog.
Ugh.
There was probably some big miscommunication along the way of her going through college and starting her career– she was most likely under the impression that if you work hard enough, you won’t be subject to unfortunate circumstances of the professional world of your livelihood. Or maybe she wasn’t told anything at all.
Regardless, my point here is be careful about the feedback you provide. While I’m a huge supporter of transparency, there’s a time a place for constructive (or scathing) feedback. There’s merit to offering positive feedback in public and constructive criticism behind closed doors. It’s how our culture is programmed.
This girl obviously wanted to garner attention (and she did) but I’m not sure her message ended up resonating with the right people.
Or I could be completely wrong. What do you think?
