Former Employees Hit Back at Kim Kardashian's Comments About Worker Laziness

Kim Kardashian, star of the reality series The Kardashians, ruffled feathers when she said in an interview that women, in general, are unwilling to work as hard as she does. Now, some women who worked hard to facilitate Kardashian's business success are speaking up about how little they were paid for their efforts. It seems that maybe being born wealthy is a bigger component of Kardashian's success than she thinks it is. Read on for details.

Via Page Six.

Jessica DeFino has a blunt reply to Kim Kardashian’s infamous “get your f – -king ass up and work” career advice: “I did — and I could barely scrape by.”

The Los Angeles woman is doubling down Tuesday on claims she struggled to pay for food and gas — while working as an employee for the now-defunct Kardashian-Jenner official apps.

DeFino, 32, first blasted the reality show royals back in March after Kim Kardashian boldly declared: “I have the best advice for women in business.”

Jessica DeFino worked for Whalerock Industries developing the Kardashian-Jenner apps. She claims she was so poorly paid that she could barely afford to survive. The Kardashian-Jenners have not responded to The Post's requests for comment.

“Get your f – – king ass up and work,” Kardashian said. “It seems like nobody wants to work these days,” she added in the now-viral video shared by Variety, which was subsequently mocked online. DeFino was one of the women who chastised the superstar for her tone-deaf comments.

“I was an editor on the Kardashian apps in 2015 in LA,” DeFino initially alleged in a Twitter post published March 9. “I worked days nights & weekends, could only afford groceries from the 99 Cents Only Store, called out ‘sick’ more than once bc I couldn’t put gas in my car to get to the office, & was reprimanded for freelancing on the side.” The scathing tweet quickly went viral, racking up more than 600,000 likes.

Now, in a scathing new piece — titled “I Worked My Ass Off for the Kardashian-Jenner Apps. I Couldn’t Afford Gas” — for Vice, DeFino elaborates on her experience, and has spoken with other employees of a Kardashian enterprise who similarly claim they were overworked and underpaid.

DeFino was an employee of Whalerock Industries, the digital media company the Kardashian-Jenner clan brought on in May 2015 to create their apps. Each sister launched an app featuring exclusive content for paying subscribers, with the venture reportedly netting them millions of dollars before they shut down in 2019.

Whalerock is not owned or operated by the Kardashian-Jenner family and DeFino admits that the sisters were “likely unaware of what the people behind their apps were paid.”

Reps for the Kardashian-Jenners have not responded to The Post’s requests for comment — but an insider familiar with DeFino’s “5-year-old” claims told The Post that the family was merely a “client of Whalerock,” so they had “no insight or knowledge into employees,” having liaised instead with only one senior person at the company.

When reached by The Post for comment, a Whalerock spokesperson said, "Jessica DeFino was an at-will employee of Whalerock for 14 months, seven years ago. Employees at her level were paid a base salary, plus overtime for any additional hours worked, and were eligible for and received bonuses and regular pay raises.”

“I was an assistant editor on the Kardashian Jenner Official Apps, and I didn’t make enough money to make it to work,” DeFino declares in the piece, saying she made an annual salary of $35,000.

DeFino — who was in her mid-twenties at the time — claims she ended up with just over $600 per week in her bank account after taxes. The amount barely covered the costs of food, rent, bills and gas.

In the article, DeFino recalls one time where she could only afford to put $4 worth of gas in her car, which wasn’t enough to get her from the office to her home.

Get the rest of the story at Page Six.