6 ms·

Apparently Yelp has a no-fly list

269 points by chriszf 14y ago

guelo 14y ago
I attended a meetup that was held at Yelp and I can confirm that entrance to the building is weirdly extra secured compared to meetups at other SF companies I've attended.
- throwaway53211 14y ago
  This entire story seems quite obvious, really. AFAIK, the CONSENSUS is they run a racket. "Sures is a nice restaurant, would be a reeeel shame if some negative reviews happened to it, wouldn't it" is their business model. (not exaggerating here - Google startup extortion, this is the only company that comes up. They've been sued.) If you're running an extortion ring, you're not gonna be letting a whooole lot of po'd people in your office. I would be extremely curious about the specific name. I bet it is someone they have tried to illegally strong-arm by showcasing negative reviews.
criveros 14y ago
Go give yelp a bad review on yelp.
n00b101 14y ago
You seem to think it had something to do with her name? Was it a Middle Eastern name?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- chriszf 14y ago
  It had everything to do with her name: she was turned away by the person with the guest list, but not by the security guy checking for fake IDs. That was the only piece of information they had. And no, she's got a down-home 'good old American' type name, if I've ever heard one.
  - cschmidt 14y ago
    I'd guess it is the name of a disgruntled business owner.
  - dfxm12 14y ago
    It didn't have to do with the name in and of itself, but the fact that it wasn't on the guest list. Did you ever get to the bottom of why it wasn't on the guest list? Did you ask the security guard (or did the guard offer) to get someone with authority to rectify the situation?
    - brigade 14y ago
      I'm curious, why is everyone in the comments assuming (contrary to the article and chriszf's comments) that this student wasn't on the guest list?
      - dfxm12 14y ago
        chriszf says nothing to the contrary in the article. We are given the facts: 1) You may only get in if you are on the list (of names) and 2) Student X did not get in.
        brigade 14y ago
        There are certainly more than two facts in those 500 words. Some relevant ones: 1. chriszf wasn't aware of the guest list requirement at the gate 2. No one at Yelp told him of this in response to his inquiries 3. Yelp was provided with a guest list 4. The security guard said "undisclosed security risk", not "not on the list" 5. Everyone except this student got in without a hitch 6. chriszf came to the conclusion that, since the only information Yelp had on her was her name (due to the guest list), that that was why they had barred her. Fact 6 implies that chriszf did check the guest list (as later confirmed here). I'm just wondering at how, especially in spite of facts 2 and 4, so many people decided that the most logical conclusion was that chriszf is an idiot that is unable to confirm whether a student's name appears on a guest list.
briandear 14y ago
Yelp reviews are a big point of anger from many business owners and there's some valid security risks. However a name based policy is rather dumb.
- cschmidt 14y ago
  I guess that is the underlying issue. Yelp is fundamentally a protection racket. "Those are some real nice reviews you have there - it would be a real shame for something to happen to them." I imagine that there are lots of business owners that would be a security risk. I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they might be doing something bad if people want to do them bodily harm.
  - killerswan 14y ago
    Anyone hated by lots of murderous psycho control-freak business owners is probably doing some good in the world.
  - pyre 14y ago
    > I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they > might be doing something bad if people want to do > them bodily harm. They don't have to be doing something wrong for people to want to harm them.
    - nnnnnnnn 14y ago
      But it helps!
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Most of the time, if people want to physically hurt you, you're either doing something really bad, or really good. I don't think Yelp falls into the "really good" category.
      - TeMPOraL 14y ago
        Or you might just be hurting business of bad people. Not every owner of the restaurant is a nice and smart person who can accept negative feedback (aka. bad review) as a sing that he/she needs to change something.
soupboy 14y ago
Why go on with the field trip at all? For all the talk about "you feel the pressure to be that authority", wouldn't the best move have been to abandon the trip and side with the student?
- lusr 14y ago
  Not sure that would achieve much, except maybe make her feel (unfairly) guilty and the rest of the class potentially resentful (despite this not being her fault). But sending her away makes no sense either. Why not ask her to wait outside, ensure the rest of the class finds their way, then attempt to find somebody with suitable authority to allow her in? There's no point arguing with a security guard past a certain point; they simply do not have authority you're seeking. However, even if you spend the entire session trying to find somebody and don't succeed, at least the student will respect and appreciate your effort and won't feel alone in her plight.
  - chriszf 14y ago
    The story was abbreviated: I talked to several people to figure out what was going on before they insisted we were blocking the entrance. By then she had decided it was not worth the trouble and wanted to leave.
minikites 14y ago
I wonder if you can pay them a fee to hide the negative security reviews of your name.
- suyash 14y ago
  haha..being Yelp..probably!
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to attend it out of principle?
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity? Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.
  - antihero 14y ago
    I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.
  - timr 14y ago
    "Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending" Yelp doesn't host these events purely out of the goodness of its heart -- these are recruiting events. They also give Yelp employees preferential access to the speakers. If people don't go to events at Yelp, people don't host events at Yelp.
  - larsberg 14y ago
    Yes it was; Yelp is recruiting. Yelp's stupidity can teach your whole class about the importance of working for conscientious, thoughtful corporations. Arguably, that's a more valuable lesson than whatever tricks pinterest used to scale (but I'm old, so take that with a grain of salt).
mnicole 14y ago
I'm confused - they had a guestlist and everyone else in the class but her was on it, or none of your students were on it and they decided to exclude her personally?
- chriszf 14y ago
  They had a guest list and all my students were on it. This particular student was also on it, along with a note to exclude her specifically from entering the office.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    That is not at all clear from your post. It sounds like she just wasn't on the list at all.
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      This. I think you may want to add that detail to your post. It's really important context.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    Ah, I read your post as if you guys literally just showed up and expected to get in. Did they know you were all together? I think you did the right thing by allowing the rest of the class to attend, but I feel terrible for your student, especially given the push for more women in engineering.
  - Bill_Dimm 14y ago
    Is there some reason why they couldn't tell you in advance that there would be a problem with this student, rather than waiting until you got there?
dustingetz 14y ago
Standard practice in Manhattan and Philadelphia at most office high-end office buildings. this is the world Americans live in. Yelp isn't in the business of protecting civil liberties. edit: standard practice to deny entry to non-badged persons who aren't on a pre-submited event guestlist. i've seen this, for example, at every tech meetup held in a downtown office building i've ever been to in Manhattan and Philadelphia. edit2: i've never actually challenged this, but i've been told that i would be denied entry if name not on list.
- jpwright 14y ago
  That's kind of a silly comment. Obviously entering a building is not a civil liberty; private buildings have the right to enforce security policies. That doesn't mean Yelp shouldn't be held accountable when their security policies are really, really dumb.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- justincormack 14y ago
  Standard practise to do what exactly? Which names are banned?
  - thegranderson 14y ago
    It's standard practice to deny anyone who is not on the guest list or an employee. Simple as that. In my experience it's pretty easy to add people to the guest list as an employee, and the event organizer should have made sure that anyone who was missed was added live.
    - justincormack 14y ago
      The person banned was on the guest list.
- dfxm12 14y ago
  I've never been denied entry to buildings in NY & Philly. In this situation, the front desk has always called the people I was visiting to confirm that I was a guest. I've never been turned away without recourse...
feydr 14y ago
this is extremely common in a lot of meetups in SF - really the only reason they want your name on the list is so if you are a crazy homeless person looking for free booze and free food with a lot of expensive ass computer shit laying around you can't just waltz in also, I am in that meetup group and yesterday was insane email traffic w/the amount of people that couldn't follow the most simplest of advice -- "we need your name"
- jarek 14y ago
  I'm a crazy homeless person, my name is Adam Smith, nice to meet you. Or was it John Brown? Do they check government-issued ID? I'm visiting from BC or Ontario, you think they could recognize a fake ID?
  - feydr 14y ago
    I think the logic is that if you have successfully guessed a name that is good enough for them - remember - we are talking about people who are literally walking in off the street - they aren't trying to 'game the system' - they might not even know where the hell they are some places ask for ids - but really a lot of places you just need to have the name - that's all
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Name on a list, sure, fine. Pretty standard practice in big office buildings. Running the guest list against some database of banned names, not so standard. One reason it's not standard is that properly operating a list of banned names is very difficult, for the reason pointed out here in this post.
  - feydr 14y ago
    I didn't get this context from the post when I read it first - I guess this begs the question - was this a former employee of yelp or was it a true mixup?
    - lwat 14y ago
varelse 14y ago
If they had the guest list beforehand, they had a responsibility to inform you of this issue before the trip. Putting you on the spot forced you into making a crappy decision either way you went with it. I personally would have yanked all the students out and explained why and exactly why you were all leaving to someone in authority if this couldn't be cleared up, further that it was going to go up on the Internet, but my personal bias stems from years of being excluded from things for no obvious reason as a kid.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Think about what benefit that would give the other class members, though. None. All they would be feeling is that they missed a lecture they wanted to be at and should be at. It's sad for the student who could not attend, that is obvious. That's Yelp's fault. But these kids aren't kids. If they wanted to stand on principle and leave the presentation, they could make that call. But the decision to pull the whole class from the conference shouldn't be up to the teacher of a college class populated by adults. Throw a shitstorm at Yelp, yes, but if I were in that class and the teacher told me to get back on the bus, I'm under no obligation to listen to him. And I likely would have stayed, almost equally as upset at the poor behavior of the instructor. The way Chris handled the situation was about as good as you can get under the unfortunate circumstances.
  - path411 14y ago
    If I was the teacher I would have just taken everyone for Ice Cream and use the time to teach the students.
Ensorceled 14y ago
I don't understand this point: "I don't hold it against the security guy, he was just following instructions." Why does everybody assume that while what he's doing is awful, he's just following instructions and that he wouldn't do anything truly f'ed up. I would assume that a guy who is willing to take a job that involves excluding a kid from their class field trip based wholly on that kid's name being on some magic list is the sort to be willing to do all sorts of evil stuff if ordered to. I'm not saying he IS the type to do evil things if ordered, but that is the safer assumption.
- TillE 14y ago
  I don't think hypotheticals are particularly relevant. What I would argue is that (unless you're the bouncer at a nightclub) it is pretty shitty to refuse someone entry without explanation. If you don't know the reason, you should be willing to call your superior and find out, and maybe sort out the situation properly. And if it's a company where that kind of information is "secret" and not disclosed to the people who are enforcing it, that's a sick culture.
- 7BrQmp6fjvqJQN 14y ago
  The student was an adult not a kid. There is a requirement of age 21 and over for the event since they were serving beer. That was very very clear weeks in advanced. It's not like we are talking about a young child here. The security staff turned an adult away.
Locke1689 14y ago
As far as I can see, the problem is with the Yelp organizers, not the security. I have attended quite a few tech talks by banking and finance firms in Chicago. Quite often they're also in some of the most high-profile buildings in the United States. On the listing of their events they always say in massive font at the bottom: IF YOU'RE NOT REGISTERED YOU WON'T GET IN. There's nothing wrong with this policy. The problem is that the Yelp event organizers didn't sufficiently publicize this policy. Edit: Apparently there was a guest list, everyone's name was on it, and hers was marked as not allowed for some unknown reason? This is not clear from the article, but I gather from the comments.
- michh 14y ago
  I did not read in the article that she was not registered?
- kstrauser 14y ago
  Re-read the story. The student was registered, but denied entry at the last moment for undisclosed reasons.
squarecat 14y ago
This sounds like a lazy (likely contracted) security "officer". Call the company he works for and relay this story. There simply cannot be a policy that does not account for people sharing the same name. If so, then THAT'S the story here...
agwa 14y ago
Interesting information about Yelp's building security from a Scala meetup group: http://www.meetup.com/Scala-for-Startups/events/71726662/ http://www.meetup.com/Scala-for-Startups/events/71726662/ They actually require government ID, which is a step above most building security I've encountered. Also, it says that Yelp "shares offices... in a building with security" - perhaps these stupid policies are more the building's fault than Yelp's?
- timr 14y ago
  Yelp has its own security team, and they do the administration of the guest list.
zem 14y ago
tear her for her bad homework!
suyash 14y ago
I hate Yelp and the Security there, worst place to organize any meetup events!
Cushman 14y ago
Important edit to the article: My students are adults, which wasn't really the point of the article (and wasn't clear). Their ridiculous exclusion policy is. As smart as kids are these days, I'm not sure a "Pinterest scaling talk" is something I'd take kids to. A lot of people here are making some assumptions based on the idea that these were children, which is pretty interesting in itself.
- wlesieutre 14y ago
  Especially since if they were kids "Direct her to the BART" might not be an appropriate response
illuminate 14y ago
I don't see the issue with businesses having a list of people who should not be admitted to a building no matter who guests them in. Certainly, fires were on a list of "do not enter" in a call center I worked at years ago, to avoid reprisal. My local Yelp seems to attract a different sort of troll considering the large amount of in-person interactions of its members and the psychopathic small-business owners who can't tolerate a bad review, or a series of bad reviews that reflect their attitude. This situation seems to have worked out poorly for all involved, but the policy of exclusion isn't necessarily the problem. I don't understand why they couldn't have the desk find someone in HR or other related department (whoever issues the order) to confer with regarding this particular guest.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  What is with phrases like "psychopathic small-business owners"? I don't understand why we are villainizing people who run small businesses.
pretz 14y ago
I work for Yelp, and it sounds like we screwed up. Apologies that we weren't able to get this woman into the MySQL event. We're obviously reviewing our security procedures to make sure they are more sane and sensitive for next time.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  You're a mobile engineer at yelp, do you have authority to speak on this publicly? Is this Yelp's official response?
  - pretz 14y ago
    You can consider this an officially sanctioned response.
- droithomme 14y ago
  Please state what criteria you use for banning people.
tkahn6 14y ago
"Wait here. After I get in I'll find the event organizer and clear this up." Am I missing something? Why did you not do this?
edward 14y ago
Yelp.com is blocked from my home Comcast connection in San Francisco (76.126.140.7). I just get "403 Forbidden". I assume somebody else in my neighborhood on Comcast tried to crawl the site and they denied access for the entire IP block. I tried e-mailing them, no response.
csense 14y ago
Ultimately, a private company should be able to ask anybody to leave their property for any reason. The checks and balances against abuse of this power are basically that, if Yelp's a jerk, they get bad PR, as is happening in this case.
toomuchcoffee 14y ago
I pressed further, and they informed me that she could not be let in because she was an "undisclosed security risk." Y'know, it might just be some poorly-paid security drone reading blindly from some poorly articulated status message on some crappy security desk app. So instead of something tactful and polite like "Not on the guest list", the applicable field got set to NULL, which bubbled up as "Reason: Unknown".
larsberg 14y ago
I realize these decisions are hard to make on the spot, but it's important to grab everybody and pull them out on the spot. As a teacher (or me in a previous life, as a manager --- also of adults), when you disagree very strongly with the ethics of actions of others, I found it both personally and team-wise rewarding to react decisively in front of my team so they'd get the message. This applies to not only strange security, but harassment, unethical behavior, and other inappropriate actions. Trust me from personal experience, you'll never regret it, and as you get older, the retelling will only get _more_ enjoyable, both for you and those who were there to see you blow up. On both sides, so long as you keep it professional.
Uchikoma 14y ago
So the teacher decided it was the best overall to let the students in, abandon the one student, it's best for him to listen to the talk (!) and go with the policy. I know it might just be me, but with this behavior I have the feeling he is supporting this policy.
zoevkay 14y ago
Hey guys! I am the student in question. As someone else said, we are all adults (in our 20's and 30's) and I wasn't hurt/isolated/crushed/etc. when our teacher didn't come with me. In fact he's a wonderful teacher and person, and instead of protesting against security (who doesn't care), he posted this, which gained a lot more attention. It turns out someone causing problems at numerous Yelp events has the same name as myself and they were on the "no-fly" list. I'd say the security needs some improvement, as they couldn't tell the difference between us after checking my government-issued ID. Thanks for all the discussion.
keithpeter 14y ago
"But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside. " I'm a teacher, and if this happened to one of my students on an official College trip (which, in the UK, would have been documented and approved in advance with a risk analysis &c, and yes even for adult students) I would probably be on the phone to the principal. Given they way things sound in this case, I would have had to consider options. I'm assuming the teacher in this case was also driving the transport.
jhull 14y ago
I think there is only one thing you can do: Leave a negative review about the place on Yelp. http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco
- chris_wot 14y ago
  The results may vary. If Yelp pays ridiculous amounts to itself for an advertising campaign, the review probably won't show up. If Yelp didn't pay for an advertising campaign, then it will show for sure. It's not like we are talking about a particularly ethical company!

269 points by chriszf 14y ago

guelo 14y ago

I attended a meetup that was held at Yelp and I can confirm that entrance to the building is weirdly extra secured compared to meetups at other SF companies I've attended.

throwaway53211 14y ago
This entire story seems quite obvious, really. AFAIK, the CONSENSUS is they run a racket. "Sures is a nice restaurant, would be a reeeel shame if some negative reviews happened to it, wouldn't it" is their business model. (not exaggerating here - Google startup extortion, this is the only company that comes up. They've been sued.) If you're running an extortion ring, you're not gonna be letting a whooole lot of po'd people in your office. I would be extremely curious about the specific name. I bet it is someone they have tried to illegally strong-arm by showcasing negative reviews.

criveros 14y ago

Go give yelp a bad review on yelp.

n00b101 14y ago

You seem to think it had something to do with her name? Was it a Middle Eastern name?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
chriszf 14y ago
It had everything to do with her name: she was turned away by the person with the guest list, but not by the security guy checking for fake IDs. That was the only piece of information they had. And no, she's got a down-home 'good old American' type name, if I've ever heard one.
- cschmidt 14y ago
  I'd guess it is the name of a disgruntled business owner.
- dfxm12 14y ago
  It didn't have to do with the name in and of itself, but the fact that it wasn't on the guest list. Did you ever get to the bottom of why it wasn't on the guest list? Did you ask the security guard (or did the guard offer) to get someone with authority to rectify the situation?
  - brigade 14y ago
    I'm curious, why is everyone in the comments assuming (contrary to the article and chriszf's comments) that this student wasn't on the guest list?
    - dfxm12 14y ago
      chriszf says nothing to the contrary in the article. We are given the facts: 1) You may only get in if you are on the list (of names) and 2) Student X did not get in.
      - brigade 14y ago
        There are certainly more than two facts in those 500 words. Some relevant ones: 1. chriszf wasn't aware of the guest list requirement at the gate 2. No one at Yelp told him of this in response to his inquiries 3. Yelp was provided with a guest list 4. The security guard said "undisclosed security risk", not "not on the list" 5. Everyone except this student got in without a hitch 6. chriszf came to the conclusion that, since the only information Yelp had on her was her name (due to the guest list), that that was why they had barred her. Fact 6 implies that chriszf did check the guest list (as later confirmed here). I'm just wondering at how, especially in spite of facts 2 and 4, so many people decided that the most logical conclusion was that chriszf is an idiot that is unable to confirm whether a student's name appears on a guest list.

briandear 14y ago

Yelp reviews are a big point of anger from many business owners and there's some valid security risks. However a name based policy is rather dumb.

cschmidt 14y ago
I guess that is the underlying issue. Yelp is fundamentally a protection racket. "Those are some real nice reviews you have there - it would be a real shame for something to happen to them." I imagine that there are lots of business owners that would be a security risk. I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they might be doing something bad if people want to do them bodily harm.
- killerswan 14y ago
  Anyone hated by lots of murderous psycho control-freak business owners is probably doing some good in the world.
- pyre 14y ago
  > I wonder if Yelp people ask themselves if they > might be doing something bad if people want to do > them bodily harm. They don't have to be doing something wrong for people to want to harm them.
  - nnnnnnnn 14y ago
    But it helps!
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Most of the time, if people want to physically hurt you, you're either doing something really bad, or really good. I don't think Yelp falls into the "really good" category.
    - TeMPOraL 14y ago
      Or you might just be hurting business of bad people. Not every owner of the restaurant is a nice and smart person who can accept negative feedback (aka. bad review) as a sing that he/she needs to change something.

soupboy 14y ago

Why go on with the field trip at all? For all the talk about "you feel the pressure to be that authority", wouldn't the best move have been to abandon the trip and side with the student?

lusr 14y ago
Not sure that would achieve much, except maybe make her feel (unfairly) guilty and the rest of the class potentially resentful (despite this not being her fault). But sending her away makes no sense either. Why not ask her to wait outside, ensure the rest of the class finds their way, then attempt to find somebody with suitable authority to allow her in? There's no point arguing with a security guard past a certain point; they simply do not have authority you're seeking. However, even if you spend the entire session trying to find somebody and don't succeed, at least the student will respect and appreciate your effort and won't feel alone in her plight.
- chriszf 14y ago
  The story was abbreviated: I talked to several people to figure out what was going on before they insisted we were blocking the entrance. By then she had decided it was not worth the trouble and wanted to leave.

minikites 14y ago

I wonder if you can pay them a fee to hide the negative security reviews of your name.

suyash 14y ago
haha..being Yelp..probably!

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

> But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside ... or pull the class out and refuse to attend it out of principle?

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity? Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.
- antihero 14y ago
  I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.
- timr 14y ago
  "Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending" Yelp doesn't host these events purely out of the goodness of its heart -- these are recruiting events. They also give Yelp employees preferential access to the speakers. If people don't go to events at Yelp, people don't host events at Yelp.
- larsberg 14y ago
  Yes it was; Yelp is recruiting. Yelp's stupidity can teach your whole class about the importance of working for conscientious, thoughtful corporations. Arguably, that's a more valuable lesson than whatever tricks pinterest used to scale (but I'm old, so take that with a grain of salt).

mnicole 14y ago

I'm confused - they had a guestlist and everyone else in the class but her was on it, or none of your students were on it and they decided to exclude her personally?

chriszf 14y ago
They had a guest list and all my students were on it. This particular student was also on it, along with a note to exclude her specifically from entering the office.
- nollidge 14y ago
  That is not at all clear from your post. It sounds like she just wasn't on the list at all.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    This. I think you may want to add that detail to your post. It's really important context.
- mnicole 14y ago
  Ah, I read your post as if you guys literally just showed up and expected to get in. Did they know you were all together? I think you did the right thing by allowing the rest of the class to attend, but I feel terrible for your student, especially given the push for more women in engineering.
- Bill_Dimm 14y ago
  Is there some reason why they couldn't tell you in advance that there would be a problem with this student, rather than waiting until you got there?

dustingetz 14y ago

Standard practice in Manhattan and Philadelphia at most office high-end office buildings. this is the world Americans live in. Yelp isn't in the business of protecting civil liberties. edit: standard practice to deny entry to non-badged persons who aren't on a pre-submited event guestlist. i've seen this, for example, at every tech meetup held in a downtown office building i've ever been to in Manhattan and Philadelphia. edit2: i've never actually challenged this, but i've been told that i would be denied entry if name not on list.

jpwright 14y ago
That's kind of a silly comment. Obviously entering a building is not a civil liberty; private buildings have the right to enforce security policies. That doesn't mean Yelp shouldn't be held accountable when their security policies are really, really dumb.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
justincormack 14y ago
Standard practise to do what exactly? Which names are banned?
- thegranderson 14y ago
  It's standard practice to deny anyone who is not on the guest list or an employee. Simple as that. In my experience it's pretty easy to add people to the guest list as an employee, and the event organizer should have made sure that anyone who was missed was added live.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    The person banned was on the guest list.
dfxm12 14y ago
I've never been denied entry to buildings in NY & Philly. In this situation, the front desk has always called the people I was visiting to confirm that I was a guest. I've never been turned away without recourse...

feydr 14y ago

this is extremely common in a lot of meetups in SF - really the only reason they want your name on the list is so if you are a crazy homeless person looking for free booze and free food with a lot of expensive ass computer shit laying around you can't just waltz in also, I am in that meetup group and yesterday was insane email traffic w/the amount of people that couldn't follow the most simplest of advice -- "we need your name"

jarek 14y ago
I'm a crazy homeless person, my name is Adam Smith, nice to meet you. Or was it John Brown? Do they check government-issued ID? I'm visiting from BC or Ontario, you think they could recognize a fake ID?
- feydr 14y ago
  I think the logic is that if you have successfully guessed a name that is good enough for them - remember - we are talking about people who are literally walking in off the street - they aren't trying to 'game the system' - they might not even know where the hell they are some places ask for ids - but really a lot of places you just need to have the name - that's all
waterlesscloud 14y ago
Name on a list, sure, fine. Pretty standard practice in big office buildings. Running the guest list against some database of banned names, not so standard. One reason it's not standard is that properly operating a list of banned names is very difficult, for the reason pointed out here in this post.
- feydr 14y ago
  I didn't get this context from the post when I read it first - I guess this begs the question - was this a former employee of yelp or was it a true mixup?
  - lwat 14y ago

varelse 14y ago

If they had the guest list beforehand, they had a responsibility to inform you of this issue before the trip. Putting you on the spot forced you into making a crappy decision either way you went with it. I personally would have yanked all the students out and explained why and exactly why you were all leaving to someone in authority if this couldn't be cleared up, further that it was going to go up on the Internet, but my personal bias stems from years of being excluded from things for no obvious reason as a kid.

freehunter 14y ago
Think about what benefit that would give the other class members, though. None. All they would be feeling is that they missed a lecture they wanted to be at and should be at. It's sad for the student who could not attend, that is obvious. That's Yelp's fault. But these kids aren't kids. If they wanted to stand on principle and leave the presentation, they could make that call. But the decision to pull the whole class from the conference shouldn't be up to the teacher of a college class populated by adults. Throw a shitstorm at Yelp, yes, but if I were in that class and the teacher told me to get back on the bus, I'm under no obligation to listen to him. And I likely would have stayed, almost equally as upset at the poor behavior of the instructor. The way Chris handled the situation was about as good as you can get under the unfortunate circumstances.
- path411 14y ago
  If I was the teacher I would have just taken everyone for Ice Cream and use the time to teach the students.

Ensorceled 14y ago

I don't understand this point: "I don't hold it against the security guy, he was just following instructions." Why does everybody assume that while what he's doing is awful, he's just following instructions and that he wouldn't do anything truly f'ed up. I would assume that a guy who is willing to take a job that involves excluding a kid from their class field trip based wholly on that kid's name being on some magic list is the sort to be willing to do all sorts of evil stuff if ordered to. I'm not saying he IS the type to do evil things if ordered, but that is the safer assumption.

TillE 14y ago
I don't think hypotheticals are particularly relevant. What I would argue is that (unless you're the bouncer at a nightclub) it is pretty shitty to refuse someone entry without explanation. If you don't know the reason, you should be willing to call your superior and find out, and maybe sort out the situation properly. And if it's a company where that kind of information is "secret" and not disclosed to the people who are enforcing it, that's a sick culture.
7BrQmp6fjvqJQN 14y ago
The student was an adult not a kid. There is a requirement of age 21 and over for the event since they were serving beer. That was very very clear weeks in advanced. It's not like we are talking about a young child here. The security staff turned an adult away.

Locke1689 14y ago

As far as I can see, the problem is with the Yelp organizers, not the security. I have attended quite a few tech talks by banking and finance firms in Chicago. Quite often they're also in some of the most high-profile buildings in the United States. On the listing of their events they always say in massive font at the bottom: IF YOU'RE NOT REGISTERED YOU WON'T GET IN. There's nothing wrong with this policy. The problem is that the Yelp event organizers didn't sufficiently publicize this policy. Edit: Apparently there was a guest list, everyone's name was on it, and hers was marked as not allowed for some unknown reason? This is not clear from the article, but I gather from the comments.

michh 14y ago
I did not read in the article that she was not registered?
kstrauser 14y ago
Re-read the story. The student was registered, but denied entry at the last moment for undisclosed reasons.

squarecat 14y ago

This sounds like a lazy (likely contracted) security "officer". Call the company he works for and relay this story. There simply cannot be a policy that does not account for people sharing the same name. If so, then THAT'S the story here...

agwa 14y ago

Interesting information about Yelp's building security from a Scala meetup group: http://www.meetup.com/Scala-for-Startups/events/71726662/ http://www.meetup.com/Scala-for-Startups/events/71726662/ They actually require government ID, which is a step above most building security I've encountered. Also, it says that Yelp "shares offices... in a building with security" - perhaps these stupid policies are more the building's fault than Yelp's?

timr 14y ago
Yelp has its own security team, and they do the administration of the guest list.

zem 14y ago

tear her for her bad homework!

suyash 14y ago

I hate Yelp and the Security there, worst place to organize any meetup events!

Cushman 14y ago

Important edit to the article: My students are adults, which wasn't really the point of the article (and wasn't clear). Their ridiculous exclusion policy is. As smart as kids are these days, I'm not sure a "Pinterest scaling talk" is something I'd take kids to. A lot of people here are making some assumptions based on the idea that these were children, which is pretty interesting in itself.

wlesieutre 14y ago
Especially since if they were kids "Direct her to the BART" might not be an appropriate response

illuminate 14y ago

I don't see the issue with businesses having a list of people who should not be admitted to a building no matter who guests them in. Certainly, fires were on a list of "do not enter" in a call center I worked at years ago, to avoid reprisal. My local Yelp seems to attract a different sort of troll considering the large amount of in-person interactions of its members and the psychopathic small-business owners who can't tolerate a bad review, or a series of bad reviews that reflect their attitude. This situation seems to have worked out poorly for all involved, but the policy of exclusion isn't necessarily the problem. I don't understand why they couldn't have the desk find someone in HR or other related department (whoever issues the order) to confer with regarding this particular guest.

slurgfest 14y ago
What is with phrases like "psychopathic small-business owners"? I don't understand why we are villainizing people who run small businesses.

pretz 14y ago

I work for Yelp, and it sounds like we screwed up. Apologies that we weren't able to get this woman into the MySQL event. We're obviously reviewing our security procedures to make sure they are more sane and sensitive for next time.

MichaelApproved 14y ago
You're a mobile engineer at yelp, do you have authority to speak on this publicly? Is this Yelp's official response?
- pretz 14y ago
  You can consider this an officially sanctioned response.
droithomme 14y ago
Please state what criteria you use for banning people.

tkahn6 14y ago

"Wait here. After I get in I'll find the event organizer and clear this up." Am I missing something? Why did you not do this?

edward 14y ago

Yelp.com is blocked from my home Comcast connection in San Francisco (76.126.140.7). I just get "403 Forbidden". I assume somebody else in my neighborhood on Comcast tried to crawl the site and they denied access for the entire IP block. I tried e-mailing them, no response.

csense 14y ago

Ultimately, a private company should be able to ask anybody to leave their property for any reason. The checks and balances against abuse of this power are basically that, if Yelp's a jerk, they get bad PR, as is happening in this case.

toomuchcoffee 14y ago

I pressed further, and they informed me that she could not be let in because she was an "undisclosed security risk." Y'know, it might just be some poorly-paid security drone reading blindly from some poorly articulated status message on some crappy security desk app. So instead of something tactful and polite like "Not on the guest list", the applicable field got set to NULL, which bubbled up as "Reason: Unknown".

larsberg 14y ago

I realize these decisions are hard to make on the spot, but it's important to grab everybody and pull them out on the spot. As a teacher (or me in a previous life, as a manager --- also of adults), when you disagree very strongly with the ethics of actions of others, I found it both personally and team-wise rewarding to react decisively in front of my team so they'd get the message. This applies to not only strange security, but harassment, unethical behavior, and other inappropriate actions. Trust me from personal experience, you'll never regret it, and as you get older, the retelling will only get _more_ enjoyable, both for you and those who were there to see you blow up. On both sides, so long as you keep it professional.

Uchikoma 14y ago

So the teacher decided it was the best overall to let the students in, abandon the one student, it's best for him to listen to the talk (!) and go with the policy. I know it might just be me, but with this behavior I have the feeling he is supporting this policy.

zoevkay 14y ago

Hey guys! I am the student in question. As someone else said, we are all adults (in our 20's and 30's) and I wasn't hurt/isolated/crushed/etc. when our teacher didn't come with me. In fact he's a wonderful teacher and person, and instead of protesting against security (who doesn't care), he posted this, which gained a lot more attention. It turns out someone causing problems at numerous Yelp events has the same name as myself and they were on the "no-fly" list. I'd say the security needs some improvement, as they couldn't tell the difference between us after checking my government-issued ID. Thanks for all the discussion.

keithpeter 14y ago

"But here I was, helpless. The only thing I could do was direct her to BART and join the rest of the class inside. " I'm a teacher, and if this happened to one of my students on an official College trip (which, in the UK, would have been documented and approved in advance with a risk analysis &c, and yes even for adult students) I would probably be on the phone to the principal. Given they way things sound in this case, I would have had to consider options. I'm assuming the teacher in this case was also driving the transport.

jhull 14y ago

I think there is only one thing you can do: Leave a negative review about the place on Yelp. http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco

chris_wot 14y ago
The results may vary. If Yelp pays ridiculous amounts to itself for an advertising campaign, the review probably won't show up. If Yelp didn't pay for an advertising campaign, then it will show for sure. It's not like we are talking about a particularly ethical company!