Hey guys! I am trying to plan the best approach to my sticky situation at work. I cannot tell if I should back down or try to fight. I was listening to the "Subjection of Women" FDR844 or 845 when Stef talks about when he faught back during his career. I immediately wanted to know what he thought my obligations were in this situation. So, I'll briefly explain to you guys and let me know what you think.
I started working at this company a little over a year ago. This company is contracted to deliver the mail/packages for a very large Pharmaceutical company(I'll name it Barck) that you have certainly heard of. I started at Barck's largest site (SiteA) at the bottom of the contractor's barrell. After the first 2 weeks, luckily, 1 of the 3 positions opened at a smaller site (SiteB) near by. In those two weeks I managed to stand out enough to get my manager to offer me the position over the 12 other veteran candidates. The position I achieved required me to go to an even smaller site (SiteC) from 8-10:30a.m. before finishing the rest of the day at SiteB. SiteC only needs 1 employee to operate, but the SiteC guy is in his mid 70's and cannot do any lifting. So I inherited the SiteB employee's obligation to do most of the old man's work in 2 and a half hours. Then I had to complete SiteB's work (which is equal to the other 2 employee's there.) in 6 and a half hours.
I am going to be a bit vague about my pay by saying now that I started above $10 an hour. When I was offered the position at SiteB&C I was given a bit more then a dollar increase. But I had to wait 3 months until I was offically hired, before getting the increase. Though this took over 4 months, because their HR department is very bad, and nobody apologized to me. This was not really too upsetting to me and is not directly related my problem at the moment, I am trying to sketch up the portrait for you. My manager told me when I got the SiteB&C position that the old man at SiteC was going to be retiring soon and if I did well I could likely get his position there which would be a "Site Lead" position with a bigger pay increase. So naturally I aimed for this position for the whole last year, working exceptionally hard. This contractor does not give annual pay increases or evaluations at all, so I figured this was the only way to get into a stable financial situation so i could focus on what I really wanted to do with my life.
During the last 12 months I have been the most helpful employee imagineable. Despite the fact that everyones hours were forced downfrom 40 to 37 & 1/2 hours, which also made overtime impossible. SiteA employee's had very bad attendence and some just abruptly left the company. I volunteered to spend someday's at SiteA instead of SiteB to help out. This made me incredibly overworked basically the whole time, for a few reasons. I still went to SiteC in the morning when I had to be at SiteA and everyday I spent at SiteA, The boxes of paper I had to deliver at SiteB were not being delivered. So If I had to be at SiteA all week, I Had to carry twice as many paperboxes when I came back to SiteB (and paper boxes are rediculously heavy). Someday's I would even start at SiteC deliver it's paper, then deliver it's packages, then rush off to SiteA to go on my first mail run there, then leave for SiteB and eat lunch on the way, deliver SiteB packages and paper, then be back to SiteA by 2:30 and do my second mailrun, finally spending my last half hour doing SiteA paper. NOBODY else did this and nobody else noticed how much additional work I had to do, no matter how many times I pointed it out.
Now, If you remember, I was doing all of this for this pay increase that came with the SiteC position when the old man retired. It is important to point out that the old man set up 3 dates for his retirement that he did not adhere to. Each time he was going to retire, my manager said it was to be mine. I would always say how I was really looking forward to the increase. He finally retired 2 weeks ago and I was given the position, but never formally. I was told that he would "stop by sometime the first week to talk about business". On Friday last week I asked if he was going to come over that afternoon, and he emailed me and said he was going to send his boss an email and that he forgot. This Thursday I got an email that with one sentence from my manager "I am going to email (his boss) about your pay increase right now" and litterelly less then a minute later I got an email that went like this:
"Bad News...(his boss) said he would not give you a pay increase, sorry.
I cannot believe this company"
-I replied later that afternoon after some thought with something like this:
"I am exceptionally confused. Increased responsibility naturally is coupled with an increased compensation. Especially when I was told I would get just that. I don't understand."
- He did not respond to the rest of thursday and sent me an email yesterday afternoon that said that he was sorry again and he sent me an email that showed his discussion with his boss. I am going to copy and paste that now: (my manager is "Bob" - His boss is "John" )
"(John),
Since June 18, Dan Frederick has been doing a Site Leads job at (SiteC). Can we get him a pay increase? He's making (X) an hour as a Receiving Clerk now. I think we gave (SiteD lead) (X + $1) . Right? (The old man) was making quite a lot more.
Please let me know.
Thank you.
(Bob)
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-(John's response):
(SiteD guy) is at (X). We have other one man sites at (X) as well. ***(I dont believe any of this btw, but that's not important)
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-(Bob's so called "counter")
How do we promote people? Do we just expect them to take on more work without any incentive? Why would they want to do that? *SiteC* is much busier (more difficult to manage) than *SiteD*. Can't we give Dan an increase? He deserves it.
(Bob)
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-(John's Reply)
(Bob), (X) is what (SiteD guy) is getting. It is what (some woman) in (SiteE location) is getting. It is what our person in (SiteF) was getting. I would argue that Dan isn't doing more work than he was doing before, just different work. If Dan wants to go back to receiving we can bump up (some girl with rotten teeth from SiteA) to (X) and put her there.
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THE END
I have a few problems with this as you can imagine. First and most important, is that Bob did not tell John that he has led me on for a year that I was getting this raise. Which I have the strong desire to point out to John myself. It is like when you are checking out at a food store and you grab a candy bar that says its 99 cents, and it turns out to be $1.99. It is not right for the cashier to make me pay $1.99 for the candy bar when it says that its 99 cents. Its false advertising. I am not saying that false advertising is immoral when its a mistake, but It is more analagous if I ate the candy bar with the cashiers permission with the intent that I was going to pay 99 cents for it, and then she charges me 1.99 for it even though I already ate it and I can't say no anymore. I also want to point out (nicely of course) that his logic is flawed, because people don't get pay increases only because they are doing more work. If that were true than landscaping would be one of the highest paying careers. It is usually the quality of the work, and how many people can do that job as well. For instance the girl with the rotten teeth would be awful at the position I am in and she is the best candidated if i left. Also, I worked harder before I got the position to show that I had a good work ethic. It is a kinda proof that I can handle the responsibility of taking care of a site by myself (which has much worse consequences if I can't). Not to mention that I didn't worked so hard for a promotion just for the extra responsibility. Also, what other people get paid at other sites essentially has nothing to do with how much I get payed. Because they have different attitudes and quality output than I do. If other people shrugged their shoulder's and hid under the desk after you spit in their face, doesn't mean that you spitting in my face is just.
I am just about 25 years old and I live with my parents. I made a lot of mistakes with drugs earlier in my life, so I never finished a full semester college. I am worried that It will be difficult for me to find a job worth this much for awhile. I know I am worth more than this as an employee, I am just unsure I will be able to get over a hump. Even If I do get my raise, I will still consistently look for a better job (like I have been) because clearly I cannot continue to rise in this company financially or otherwise. But this position puts me in a place where it is easier for me to focus on the rest of my life. I am not nearly as physically exhausted at the end of everyday.
I have been reading a lot of posts and i've come to really respect FDR's community. I do not think I could get better feedback from anywhere else without some incredible luck. I would find it very useful to hear how you guys would handle this situation. I feel like I am definately going to do something, if I don't hear evidence to the contrary, but i have few ideas about what exactly I should do.