I have few work friends, but one of them is that happy hour-having, social butterfly type person. Last night, I took her up on drinks, and I showed up but other work people were there. I could tell they were uncomfortable with me showing up, like maybe I was invited but they hoped I wouldn't come. Steph, my boss, who hates my guts, may be talking shit about me to other people in order to get my team to shame me, which wouldn't work, but there may be some misconceptions about how much contribute.
Off the clock, I don’t want to talk about work. However, that’s all these people want to talk about. Whatever, when in Rome. We got our annual review early this year, probably to try and stop the exodus of people. So the raises came up. From my other post you’ll know I just hit metrics and do almost nothing else.
Trenton, bless his heart, is one of those Koolaid people, he’s got all the free swag collected since his first day at work, always volunteers for OT, does the side projects, grossly positive all the time. Passes the hat around to get flowers for sick folks, group birthdays etc. Calling him a bootlicker is harsh, but idk what else I could call someone who commissioned with their own money a fuckin Funko Pop of our Area Manager. He might have actually become the Koolaid man if it weren’t for this reality check coming his way.
Trent was so hype when we started talking about work, he’d gotten his best raise yet. He was told he was a great employee, they love his energy, they want to foster his development blah blah
He got a 12.59% raise.
I got a 12.62% raise.
I could just see that .03% was all it took to ruin his whole week. He more or less asked how that was possible, which is rude but he’s a couple drinks in and just had his world shaken. We do have different managers on this team, but his loves him, and mine hates me. So I ask about stats, all those side projects do take up a lot of time. And I ask what his QA is. (Our bare min expectation is 99.4%). His is a shameful 98.something%. Mine is 99.6%.
I give him some real talk. The only reason this guy didn’t get a bigger raise is they need some way to manipulate him into trying even harder in Q1, and because his boss knows that Trent wouldn’t raise a fuss because he’s so agreeable. I got a bigger piece of the pie because some poor soul on my team likely needed to be “punished” by Steph for not meeting goals, where I met mine exactly.
So who knows, maybe Trent will take this as a sign to slow down and do less. Or maybe he’ll double down and work even harder. Either way, I don’t care. Probably will make Steph look like a huge liar, which is a nice way to start the week.