Asked my boss for a raise and she told me to do community service instead
I work 65-70 hours/week between two jobs: a daytime white collar job, and a nighttime/weekend food service job. I get paid okay for both. I've been at the food service job for over a decade now. I'm a supervisor there and bend over backwards to make sure things run smoothly. If anything happens (even when my boss/general manager is present), almost everyone comes to me for help addressing it. If it helps paint a better picture, the place would survive if I left, but would definitely accelerate the already deteriorating standards (and hygiene) of the place.
Anyway, I got hit with some pretty bad news: my roommate backed out of our lease and now I'm stuck paying more than double each month what I've been paying (we split rent/utilities proportionally based on our incomes). I can technically afford to pay the difference going forward, but on top of a ton of student debt and some credit card debt that I've been trying to pay off (spent mainly on daily necessities), my net takehome after bills is closer to zero than I would like it to be.
An employee looks at something on her phone at her desk
This person was in a tricky situation where she needed more support from her workplace. She was already working two jobs, and overextending herself to a major degree just to make ends meet. It's not easy to live this type of lifestyle forever. At some point, you probably want to ask for more. So that's what she tried to do, and expected to be met with at least some amount of empathy. That's not what she found, though, and instead came up against another challenge. Her boss was dismissing her concerns. This never feels good, no matter who you are.
A boss and her employee sit across from each other at a desk
The people in this photo are models
In the 10 years working at the FSE, I've only ever asked for 1 raise, which was approved with some apprehension by my boss but with the only justification being "to be fair and reach what the other (older) supervisors are making"... (um okay so that's her admitting she's been underpaying me for years, but that's another story). Every year that I've been there, I have gotten a very modest raise (about 2%), in addition to the modest raise I got when I was promoted a few years ago. The place I work for makes multi-millions in revenue (I've seen on our POS). I've also seen spreadsheets of many of their expenses. My estimates are that this place profits 30% of their revenue (so, about seven figures).
I pulled my boss aside a week and a half ago and explained the change in my financial situation and asked if she would consider a raise. She looked at me like I just spat on her, said that I already make the most out of anyone there (most of our staff are high schoolers and college students), and then made a half-assed attempt to make me feel better. She then says she needs to think about it (she said the same thing the first time I asked for a raise, and then my next shift, she said she'll give it to me, but this time, it's been over a week and a half of her avoiding bringing this up or if she'll give me a raise or not, which I'm leaning towards not).
A boss shows her employee something on a tablet at work
Subjects are models representing story
Sometimes you have to learn when to give advice and when to withhold it. If you're not going to solve someone's immediate problem, then they might take your attempts to help otherwise as a slap in the face. That's what happened here. After denying her employee a raise, this boss had some advice for her that disregarded her financial situation. It left her feeling even worse than she already did. In this situation, it would have been better just to keep her opinions to herself. Keep scrolling to see what happened here and decide what you think about it.
An employee looks stressed at her desk
Anyway, the second-biggest smack in the face in this whole situation (after knowing how underpaid I am), is when she suggested that I should volunteer a few hours each week for (ironically enough) a food bank... I was GOBSMACKED... The reason why she suggested this is because the state that I live in offers a student loan reimbursement (*emphasis on the reimbursement*) program for up to a few thousand dollars of student loans each year that you also volunteer at least 50 hours of community service. Again, I'm already working 65-70 hours/week! I don't have time to volunteer, regardless of whether or not I want to. In order for me to even qualify (assuming I could fulfill the hours requirement), I would need to make qualifying student loan payments (aka thousands each year on certain student loans). And assuming I did both of those things, the actual reimbursement wouldn't hit my bank until at least 6 months from now (after taking up almost all of my very limited remaining free time until then for volunteering). It was beyond tone-deaf and out-of-touch of her to avoid my question for a raise and instead tell your "most valued" employee to volunteer to maybe get this student loan reimbursement. I need immediate relief now from you underpaying me... not to go through the hoops of a government program with no guarantee I'll even get the reimbursement...
It's crazy these business owners Boomers get [mad] when they think "the welfare state" is ridden with fraud, meanwhile they tell their own employees that they underpay to apply for government benefits.
-u/blindrunner_
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