For about two years now I have been selling jewelry at a pretty prestigious family owned company. I got into this job because it seemed fun, and somewhat low stress while finishing up college. This was my first job after being laid off due to covid from my last job (a VERY prestigious designer/luxury brand) and I was excited to be back around people in a retail environment. I instantly fell in love with the atmosphere, work culture, and the people who worked there. After all, I do not like leaving jobs or bouncing around very much, I like consistency and comfort.
Fast forward about 1 year, I decide that I want to turn this job into a career. After numerous discussions about how I can grow into a management training position, it started to feel like a carrot was being dangled in front of me. I would continually impress the management team, and would be fed added responsibility and be leaned on by them for things like the development of my peers, and even getting in front of some of the interpersonal workplace issues. A position opens up that I was looking to apply for so I did, and I was not even given an interview. Instead, someone hired within the last 2 weeks got the position. I wasn't resentful to the person as they had 12 years of management experience and I have 0.
The team (my peers) however, disliked this very much and felt like I had been swindled so they began 1 by 1 coming to me to tell me how I should quit, or ask for a raise, or any number of things that would involve a career change. This started to weigh on my conscious after about a week of this consistently happening… so I decided to ask for a raise. After all, im about 2 weeks from hitting 2 years in the company and guess what? Havent received a single performance raise yet, even though I have so much more responsibilities than my peers, and my sales numbers are very good. Now to ask for a raise, I would have to discuss it with my store manager. Well, the store manager of 17 years who was overseeing my development and growth was fired about a month ago. So instead I felt it would be more appropriate to reach out to the district manager. I ran this by my immediate supervisor and he agreed, and even told me he would nudge her a bit. Turns out he let her know I would be reaching out to her… GREAT no anxiety anymore right? No… because we had hired a new store manager about 3 days ago.
When he showed up, I pulled him aside to let him know why this conversation was going above his head (he had no idea who I was and also if he was there 2 days and asking for a raise for his team thats not too good). He entirely agreed with me. A few days go by, and I get a response from my district manager informing me that I need to talk to the store manager about it. Completely passed off.
I go back to my store manager and we have the discussion. He tells me I should definitely ask for the raise and he's happy I know my worth considering I have multiple company wide awards I have been given in the last 2 years, my numbers are insane, and I have yet to receive a raise. He then tells me its likely I will not get it because yearly performance reviews are coming up in September, and that if they say no then “they will take care of you on your PA”. I told him how my last PA went, which was a “You needed to fix these things when we wrote the PA, but you've fixed them by the time we could talk to you about it, but we feel your pay is good for now”. He told me that was a justified reason for not getting a raise originally. At this point I have expressed extreme frustration with my managers, and they are all in unison pushing to get me a raise but…. I don't have the faith.
Maybe I hate this job.
What should I do?