Warning long post so feel free to scroll along if you’d like…
I loathe sharing personal things on social media for various reasons, especially when it comes to work, but I have to get this off my chest.
I’ve been at my job for 6 1/2 years now, and for the most part, I absolutely love it. Not every day, but most days, I don’t dread going into work, because what I do serves are larger purpose, besides just bringing home a paycheck. But let’s be honest, almost no one goes to work simply out of the goodness of their own heart. We all work to make money to support ourselves and our families. So with that in mind, something happened today that is going to take me quite a while to get over.
First, a little context- Every month, revenue reports come out that track how the business is doing and where we are year-to-date in order to hit our revenue budget. And every single month of 2022, we were above budget, on track to hit overall revenue budget and even exceed it. And in my community in particular, that is VERY difficult. Now I may be biased, but my community is one of the best in the many area, and the cost reflects that. You get what you pay for, after all. But like for everyone, cost is a huge factor in choosing a community for your loved one (I work for a residential community). On paper, we’re all relatively equal. It’s the little things that set each community apart, and at the risk of sounding vain, I think I’ve done a damn good job of selling the community to best of my ability, in spite of the physical challenges I’ve faced these past few years.
My company has been great to me- more than understanding and bending over backwards to accommodate my ever-changing health, and in return, I’ve given my loyalty and 110% every single day- Sometimes to detriment of my health and the well-being of my family and loved ones. I don’t know about y’all, but I feel like my work gets the best of me every day, and my family oftentimes doesn’t. It took a long time for me to take a real “day off”, meaning going an entire 24 hours without doing something work related. I’ve taken one 5 day vacation in 2 years. Even on days off, I did something for work. I felt it was the least I could do. But from my standpoint, I feel I’ve more than paid back for every sacrifice that was made by them on my behalf.
The reports for December finally came out today. The significance of these report is two-fold. First, I work in a for-profit business, and my job is solely to grow/maintain revenue and grow the business. I take a lot of pride of ensuring budgets are hit or exceeded. Plus, staffing is 100% dependent on census and revenue, so it’s my job to ensure that other employees in my community are able to maintain their hours or get more hours if they want them. Second, there are semi-annual bonuses attached to hitting revenue. The first is if revenue it met or exceeded from January-June, and the second is from July-December. I exceeded budgeted revenue every month in 2022, and by the end of November, we were over budget by approximately 2%. This may not sound like a lot, but with a business with a gross annual revenue of $2.3 million, 2% above is relatively high.
Because of this, I was 100% confident and SURE, that I would exceed overall budgeted revenue for the 6 months. I would have had to really crap the bed in December to miss it. Well, apparently, that’s what I did. Even though I did move in 2 new residents, 4 moved out due to unfortunate circumstances, causing our revenue to drop. I wasn’t too concerned at the time, though, because we were way over budget, so I figured that the overage would offset any December losses. They take an overall of the 6 months into account, and don’t expect that every month be met or exceeded. I got a text from my boss today that we exceeded overall revenue budget for the year by over $14,000. I was so excited! My hard work paid off! But it didn’t… he then tells me that we missed December’s budget by $13,000. That got me worried, because as of November, we were $11,000+ over budget, and a 13,000 loss is greater than an 11,000 gain, obviously. I asked if we hit the 6 month budget. It turns out we missed it by approximately $1400. Why does this matter if we hit the overall year budget? Well because my company tracks it in 6 month increments, not the whole rolling year. That means that because I didn’t hit budget from July-December by $1400 (.001% off the mark), I did not qualify for the semi-annual bonus. Nevermind that the entire year’s revenue budget was exceeded, which is ultimately what matters to the company.
I feel like I got screwed. I worked my butt off all year to make this bonus. It’s not even that much money in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the principle of it. I take so much pride in what I do, and to have this taken away from me due to the smallest amount and a technicality (didn’t hit 6 months but hit all 12 overall), is a slap in the face. I was counting on this. It was supposed to be paid on my birthday, and now it’s gone. Happy birthday to me, right?
I see that some things come so easy for some people. You’re always told growing up that hard work pays off and if you put in the effort, the rewards will follow. This hasn’t been the case for me for my entire career. I give 110% towards everything I do, and I feel like my return is no where near what I put in. This also isn’t the first time this has happened to me. It happened 2 years ago where I missed the mark by literally less than $200. Less than $200 versus over $2 million in revenue. Rounding up, it is 100%, but my company doesn’t round it. It’s 100%, greater than that, or nothing. And so I get nothing.
This is such a hard pill to swallow. I normally take a few minutes to wallow and then move on, but I can’t shake it this time. Am I being unreasonable to think that I am entitled to this reward because the overall revenue was achieved? I don’t know. It will be hard to keep trying and giving 110% moving forward, knowing this is the possible and most likely probably result in the future as well. My boss told me that it wasn’t in my nature to not try. And he’s right. I have too much pride. But it’s one of those things where it would be much easier to accept if it was missed by a lot versus missing it by less than a fraction of 1%. It’s like when you watch your favorite team in a big game, and your team is comfortably winning for almost the whole game, but then the opposing team makes the game winning goal at the closing buzzer. It’s the same feeling.