So I work for this marketing & brand activation company for quite some years now, but in day contracts. Meaning I don’t work with a regular planning. Basically the job is merchandising in stores, can be for any type of products, make up in drugstores, food in supermarkets, tools in DIY stores and so on. As you can imagine this job requires some serious back and forth driving, because on top of going to all of these stores, I also have to pick up stuff at the logistics, such as Cardboard cutouts from the brands, visuals, stickers and whatnot. Sometimes I spend 4 + hours a day in my car on top of the 8 hours of work. But this never bothered me, I love driving. I actually really really like my job. The company knows I live far away from the logistics (at leat an hour drive), but most of the stores I have to visit are in my area so I always try to fill up my car with as much as possible when visiting the logistics, to avoid those trajectories.
Anyway, now a couple of weeks ago I receive a job offer within the company (through HR), saying they love my work ethics and would love me to work full time for them.
The job offer gives a salary indication, including some mealvouchers, but no companycar, no compensation for the kilometers, nor for the gas.
As I am close to some of my other coworkers, I know they get around the same salary, however one of them has a companycar, the other one has a gas compensation and the other one has a card to fill up his gastank for a good amount of money per month (even though he lives 20mins from the logistics department…).
So I send and email to the department manager, my boss, saying I’m flattered about the job offer, and that I’m very interested, but I would need something to compensate all the time I spend in my car. I told her I know what other settlements exist within the company, since I talked about it with other colleagues, so I’d love to discuss then possibilities for myself.
She called me 5mins after receiving my email saying stuff like “how dare you” “comparing salaries with coworkers is so impolite” “I won’t tolerate this within my department” “I thought you had more respect for me” “I guess I made a mistake with this job proposal” and so on.
I was so confused, since when is it impolite to discuss salaries with coworkers? If they are okay sharing their salaries with me, isn’t that their choice?
Most of them are younger than me, work only a year or two for this company and have less experience, so their salary compared to mine is not really founded…
Now I’m starting ti think maybe this is because I’m a woman and all of the others are men, however my boss is a woman herself so I wouldn’t expect such sexism coming from her, which is why I’m not sure about the whole reasoning behind this.
I did not accept the joboffer, and now another one of the day contracts got it. I’m not jealous; I never asked for this job in the first place, they literally offered it to me because they like my workethics.
Should I try to get more information about her rant; and takenthe risk to be fired for inappropriate behaviour or something, or just leave it as it is?
TL;DR: my boss got mad at me for comparing my salary with those of my coworkers when asking compensation for all the time I spend in a car