I have worked in mental health for the past 5 years. I have been through a couple of different agencies where the management pushed us to our limits and paid hardly above minimum wage. I would work 25 hours per week, 24 hours of client contact and one hour of documentation time. Because it takes more than 2 minutes to write treatment notes, counselors would usually just stay after work for free and finish up their work so we don’t get fired. I recently moved and got a job at a town mental health agency and stacked my schedule full and stayed after a half hour each day to finish my work. After about 6 months of doing this, the director came into the office after close (she leaves at 6, office closes at 9) because she forgot her cell phone and noticed I was (the only one) still there. She questioned me and I explained what I had been doing for the past six months. My most recent direct deposit was higher than normal and I brought this to the billing office’s attention as I didn’t want to get in trouble (you can see how paranoid I have become with work). The billing manager informed me that I had received a 33% raise as of the day after the director saw me stay after work. Genuinely didn’t think stuff actually happened any more and I think I can actually work here in the long term.