This is a new account as my old one got broken into, but I do frequent this subreddit and love your ideology. I want to ask for a raise, but I think I have a bit of a unique situation that makes it hard to do so.. Here’s the background context
-This is my third summer working here (Daycamp head counselor).
- The workplace has a lot of ties to my personal life. We’re all teenagers that have met at one point or another, this particular place of work has ties to my place of worship, youth group, pretty much my whole religious community.
-Our head staff/supervisors are all quite amiable, but our boss always claims that they are short-budget and can’t afford much outside of what they plan for annually. (This has been going on the entire time I’ve worked there… so I kinda call BS on that)
-Im being paid 8.25/hr. The pay for each staff member ranges a bit (despite our boss’s wishes, we’re all pretty open about what we make). For my job title, pay ranges from 7.50- ~10.00 among staff.
Needless to say what I’m getting paid, as a rising first-year college student no less, is incredibly low. With rising gas prices, I’m spending an entire day and a half’s paycheck about every week (I commute 30 minutes both ways and my car is not great on gas).
What makes this hard is that I can’t be a dick or play much hardball with a competing job offer, since what I say is inevitably going to be passed through the ranks of my religious community (as i said above, I’ve a lot of ties and interconnectedness with work and that part of my life). What I need is to figure out what to say to my boss to get the raise that I deserve. I know the time and commitment I’ve put into this job is worth far more than what they pay me, but understand I won’t get near what I want due to “budget constraints” and just want the most I can reasonably ask for.
What can I do?