I Got a Raise!

April 21, 2008

I Got a Raise! by Kari Breed

When I interviewed for my job, I had no idea what to expect as far as pay. I know what I was hoping for, but then again, my hopes have very rarely preceded reality – mostly because they cost too much, like an amazing Tuscany style house with a courtyard and a pool. So, literally, what this means at work is I’d have to pay them to pay me what I’d really like. That seems a little counterintuitive, so I don’t do it.

When the guy hiring me explained my starting pay, I readily agreed, but what I was thinking included some expletives I should not repeat here, but they did involve a couple of S words, some Fs, a few GDs and sometimes Y.

I could have said No Thanks, but the stark terror of job-hunting prevented me.

I surprised myself at my new job by being ooper competent, and everyone I worked with surprised me by being exceptionally nice – except for that one guy who shall remain nameless. I don’t actually know his name, so, for all I know, he is nameless. I work mostly with the crew in the back, managing inventory in one way or another. I’m not a manager, but I manage. I manage to manage, which is to say that I deal. I deal with inventory. I count it a lot, basically. I come in at six in the morning and count shit. That’s pretty much my job description. I’m a shit counter. We have a lot of shit at our store. We have a lot of cool shit. And we get a discount. I’m pretty sure the upper management has us count all this shit because they know we’ll buy it.

It’s peaceful in the wee hours when we come in to do an inventory scan. It’s a lot like fishing out there in your little boat in a little pond of solitude, listening to the wildlife call quietly out to each other, hoping to get laid. That’s what our scanning guns sound like, anyway. We all become very quiet, and the only sounds are random beeps scattered throughout the rock/pop section, or, perhaps, books. Beep…. Beep……. Beep… Occasionally a gun will chortle a multi-sonic sound, announcing an item to be pulled and shipped back to the distributer. It’s like the startled cry of a whippoorwill or the mating call of a grackle.

After six months at the job, it was time for my review, and for once in my life, I expected it to be stellar. I know I do a good job. I show up. I care. And the time when I was sick, I was really sick. I had the flu. I had a temperature. I gab a little, but not too much. When I make a mistake, I own up to it. I am the type of employee they should want to keep. I’m honest. I’m fair. I get along. I work. I could be the next manager, the next store manager, the next district manager. I could be a CEO – one day. I’m being trained to take over running the inventory scans, a job that is important and must be done with exceptional accuracy. And considering all of this, I expected a BIG FAT raise.

I got ten cents.

It turns out that, no matter how stellar your review, everyone gets the same thing. Everyone gets ten cents. This is not what I was expecting. I mean, I could crap ten cents. I could literally eat a dime and crap ten cents. I could even do it every hour on the hour, one ten cent crap for every hour I work. I find dimes on the ground. This is my raise?

This is an abomination. This is a mistake. This negates the review process. This punishes people who do a great job; the ones who actually run the stores, who are more than little stand-arounds passing time after the last bell rings for the day at their high school. This also hurts the company. It reminds people that their job is only temporary, something to do in transition to something else. It causes people to slack off, to match their efforts to their rewards. It has caused me to reassess my place in the company and in my life. It reminds me that this is just a supplemental job and a reason to get out of the house and around nice people for twenty hours a week. On a positive note, it reminds me that I’m a writer.

I entertained the idea of quitting. I entertained the idea of stepping down from learning to run the scans. I won’t quit my job because it turns out I like it. I won’t step down from learning to run the scans, because I’m interested in it. I won’t slack off because I’m conscientious. But what I will do, if and when the time comes, is leave. I will leave this place without too many qualms. I will move on to better things if there are better things to move on to. I’ve reassessed. I know my place. This is what they’re getting for their ten cent raise.

This is just reality. Everyone reassesses.

Life Lesson: The reviewers get reviewed in the review process, too.

Posted in Job, Money