This is going to be a long rant so I apologize in advance. To give some backstory I’ve been with this company for almost 7 years. The place I work at is a credit card company. Since Covid we are taking back to back phone calls and the customers we deal with are way angrier now than they have ever been before. I’m currently a supervisor so my normal job is dealing with angry people…..but lately it’s been mentally exhausting getting yelled at every day by people who either don’t understand how credit cards work or don’t understand basic math. Since Covid has started as well more and more people have been quitting and we have been short staffed in all departments.
The company all of 2021 has been bragging about how “this is our best year of all time” with a record breaking profit of $5.4 billion (a 250% increase from 2020) What they decided to “give back” to their employees is a TAXED bonus of $1,250. On paper that sounds awesome until you actually look at the numbers. As of 2020 (most recent data I can pull) there were 17,600 employees (no way in fuck it’s that high anymore) 17,600X$1,250=$22 million (this number is actually smaller because Team Leaders and above are exempt from the bonus) $22 million is roughly .4% of their total profits.
Now this company has an annual road show where the CEO talks to all of the employees about the prior year and what to look forward to in the future. Throughout the roadshow people can type their questions up and a moderator decides which questions can be made public to the people in the roadshow and which questions are asked to the CEO at the end. I was told from friends that attended earlier roadshows that most of the questions asked to the CEO were in regards to pay increases and he kept deflecting the questions by saying “our pay is competitive” so I already knew what to expect when my group went in. My very first question I asked the CEO was “Based off other roadshows this year you keep using the word “competitive” when describing our pay and stating our pay is high compared to our competition. This info is somewhat correct, but do you think our pay is FAIR for the amount of money we are EARNING for the company.” He froze for 5 seconds and said “that’s a great question. We have never based our pay off of how much money we earn as a company” I asked a few more questions that were made public to the roadshow but were never asked to the CEO.
The next day I was pulled aside and asked if I wanted to have a meeting with my boss and her boss (department manager) based off the questions and concerns I brought up during the road show. During this meeting I brought up that back when I started in 2015 I made $25,480 and now I currently make $43,000. That is roughly a 40% increase in my wage. But between 2015-2022 inflation has gone up 18.6%. So my actual wage increase is about 21.4%. If we include inflation my ACTUAL wage is $39,281. And that my raise averages out to about a $6.63 hourly wage increase over the last 7 years. I also let them know that since I’ve been here I’ve had a total of 13 raises ( 4 of those being promotions) and that my 13 raises averages out to about a $.51 cent increase per raise. In this meeting I also talked about how the CEOS pay is public info. In the last 2 years his pay has gone up 82%. And that this website I used also shows the average employee pay being $61,430 and that I make substantially LESS than the average employee even though I’ve been here for 7 years and that I’m currently a supervisor. I informed them that there is such a huge gap in pay between the people who take calls and the higher ups. The response I received from my department manager was “we don’t base our raises off how much money we earn as a company, that our yearly raises are based off our performance.” He also stated that inflation has “only recently just started going up”. I asked him what the average yearly pay raise is and he told me 3%. I let him know that In the last two years inflation has gone up 8.6% so even with me getting my standard 3% raise I’m still losing 2.6%. His response to me was “well it sounds like your main concern is about pay. We won’t be increasing anyones wages so if I were you I would be looking for a new job that pays more.” I asked him why this company would rather hire a new person, train them, hope they stay as long as I have with the knowledge and skills that I do instead of just…..pay us more. He said “we don’t want you to leave but we can’t do what you want us to do” so….needless to say I left the meeting very pissed off and I have actively started looking for a new job.