REUTERS/Jim Young
Some people are deleting their Yelp accounts to protest the company's recent firing of a single mom who claims she was terminated after taking time to care for her boyfriend in the hospital.
And they've taken to Twitter to make a point of it.
The people deleting the app are protesting the firing of Jaymee Senigaglia, a single mother who took to the blogging platform Medium on Monday. Senigaglia writes that she was fired after taking time off to care for her boyfriend who was in the hospital due to a mountain biking accident.
In her Medium post, Senigaglia writes about how hard she worked at Yelp and about the difficulties of working at the company while trying to support her family.
From her Medium post:
I am the single mother who closed her 1st deal on her first pitch on her first day on the phones in Yelp Sales Training.
I am the single mother who closed two deals with a fever during winter “break” while my co-workers took their days off for fun. I worked through and paced my time off into half days bc I knew I needed to save up my time off.
I am the single mother whose manager in month two told me that by using my last half day off we are allotted during training to care for my son who was having breathing problems from bronchitis, that I was putting her in a tough spot. I stayed at work.
Senigaglia writes that her boyfriend "landed in the ICU with a brain bleed." She claims that while she was at the hospital with him, she got a call from her manager, director, and HR at Yelp who said she "could either come in now or resign."
"I am the single mother who was the top of my class in training for you Jeremy and absolutely did not let you down but the way you treat parents as an employer is a little confusing," she wrote, referring to Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's CEO.
"I’m educated. I am capable. I am not looking for hand outs," she writes. "I do not rely on the state to care for my son. My family needed me and you fired me Yelp. And while you use our lunch breaks for company wide meetings to keep spreading anti-extortion campaigns, let’s not forget everyone: #YelpCares."
In a statement to Tech Insider, Yelp said that the company "made numerous exceptions to [its] attendance policy to accommodate her "unplanned personal situations" during her three months of employment with the company.
"We also provided a cumulative ten paid days off to cover those needs, despite her status as a new employee who had not yet accrued PTO time," Yelp said in its statement.
"We regret the timing of this termination and that it was handled in the midst of a critical personal situation for Ms. Senigaglia."
This is only the latest high profile personnel issue for Yelp. Last month, an employee of Yelp/Eat24 was fired after writing an open letter to Stoppelman — again, on Medium — claiming she was having trouble buying groceries.
You can read Senigaglia's full post on Medium.
Here's Yelp's full statement:
Yelp employs thousands of people and provides new job opportunities to hundreds each year. We provide extensive training and significant benefits to our employees, as well as guidance for those with performance issues.
Trainees joining our sales team are onboarded through an immersive 60-day training program that requires each trainee to commit to reliable attendance. Trainees agree to miss no more than two days so that training teams and programs are not disrupted. For those that are not able to meet that attendance requirement, we offer for them to re-apply and join a subsequent training class. We made an exception for Ms. Senigaglia and kept her with her training team while we continued to try and meet her needs, including an adjusted daily arrival time.
During Ms. Senigaglia’s 90 days of total employment (59 actual workdays), we made numerous exceptions to the attendance policy to accommodate her unplanned personal situations. We also provided a cumulative ten paid days off to cover those needs, despite her status as a new employee who had not yet accrued PTO time.
We regret the timing of this termination and that it was handled in the midst of a critical personal situation for Ms. Senigaglia.
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