Pay raise politics
After a long meeting with my office manager Dawn yesterday, I'm web surfing at work again. As I told her, one coworker saved a bunch of porn on a company PC and two others never do a damned thing. If all that flies, there's no way in hell they're going to fire their hardest worker for web surfing. As predicted, our boss Gordon never implemented any monitoring measures. Dawn says as long as I'm not surfing blatantly when he's in the room it's fine.When I started at HappyTech I had been temping for peanuts at some truly horrible jobs. Desperate to get someplace with health benefits and better pay, I gave a very low salary requirement to get hired. Since I have proven to be an asset to the company and have eight years of experience in the field, there's no reason why I shouldn't have a significantly higher salary now. Especially since I found out one of my do-nothing coworkers makes way more than me. Back in December I told Gordon I was barely making ends meet and was about to take on an additional $600 a month in car expenses. I explained that I like working here but would be forced to look for another job if I don't get a significant increase soon. He has been promising that raise ever since. A while ago he told me he had asked the bigwigs for the highest pay increase he has ever requested: 20%. We were supposed to meet about it last week. My annual increase is already a month late.
Dawn is my secret pipeline for all inside information. She told me my raise had been approved, sort of. They planned to give me 10% now and the other half in six months. I told her it was too little too late and reiterated what I told Gordon in December. I also admitted I'm job hunting and claimed I have already gone on one interview. I know I can get away with putting the pressure on because Dick, my help desk supervisor, is constantly threatening Gordon he'll find another job.
Dawn thought Gordon could be persuaded to do better, so she relayed some of our conversation to him. Later she told me he was on phone with the CEO trying to negotiate. I just got an email from him saying, "I have your payrise approved but need to discuss somethings with you. We will have a review and 2007 objectives meeting next Tuesday." Dawn thinks this means I'll get the full 20% raise now. I'm skeptical.
posted by Sgt Howie @ 11:13 AM
Comments: 2
