TL;DR: My job is decent. Been there three years. I refuse to work overtime. My last raise was shit. Manager tried talking to me today about taking on more work/responsibility with the incentive of “Hey, I know we fucked you on your raise in March, but if you take on more work, we’ll give you just a smidge more money.” I said no. Life is too short.
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I’ve been with my company for almost three years. I’m college-educated and I’m about to be 39. It’s a decent job, hybrid, and I WFH Thursdays and Fridays. I’m on salary, my pay is pretty decent for what I do, but the first year I had an employee review, I was given over a $2 raise, and earlier this year (March) during my employee review, I was only given a $0.72 raise. I also never stay late, but I do tend to sign on or show up a few minutes before my shift (like 15-30 minutes earlier, especially when WFH). Since then, I have completely changed my work habits. I don’t chit chat with anyone (people at your job are not your friends), keep my headphones in all day and stay in my own bubble, and complete all my work in a timely fashion. I don’t hate my job, but I also don’t love it. It’s just a paycheck, really, while I figure other things out.
So this morning my boss asks me if she can speak with me privately a little bit later. Of course, I suffer from diagnosed panic disorder and anxiety, so I tell her that telling an anxious person that you want to talk to them “later” is a terrible thing to do, and can you please just tell me what it is. She says she wants to speak privately so my coworker doesn’t hear, and that it’s nothing bad, nothing about my work performance, but that it is regarding work.
Fast forward: We talk for about an hour, and she asks me where I see myself with the company in the future and my future in general. Since I’m working on being more authentic in my life, I told her I really don’t think about the future — particularly because I’ve experienced so much loss in my life that I really can’t and don’t want to. She mentioned that I was unhappy with my raise, and I said yes, and then she proposed that if I wasn’t too overwhelmed with my current work load (I am, but I manage), that I could take on more responsibility and possibly get another raise. Yeah, no. I outright told her I was fine in the position that I was currently in, that I have no interest “at this time” to grow or take on more responsibility, and that I’d like to just keep doing what I’m doing. She said it was fine, but repeatedly mentioned that her and my big boss just think I “work so fast” so I can take on more responsibility. I actually do work fast, but I work at half the speed I can to do my current work load, because I don’t want more work to be given to me — mainly other people’s work, which I also expressed that I no longer wanted to be given to me, since that’s what happens when you work fast. So I told her that I’d like to stop being given that reputation, and that I just work normal and efficiently.
Anyway, yeah, I just came here to vent. I think it went well. I think she was disappointed, though.