And only 5 paid vacation days and 2 paid sick days a year. I make $16.50/hour, living in a major city with a $15/hour minimum wage.
I've been working for him for going on 14 years and am his only remaining full time employee. I did the math and, adjusted for inflation, I make almost exactly the same wage as when I started, and I actually get FEWER paid days off than I did at one point early on.
It is a struggling company but I've tried to assess just how much the company and my boss are struggling vs how much he is just ripping me off.
He seems to think of himself as a really good guy, “progressive,” and a thoughtful employer. He is in some ways, and I care a lot about what we do at the company and find the work interesting, and I do get certain perks from the job like flexible hours and access to software that would otherwise be unaffordable to me. However, he has consistently underpaid his employees and his conceptualization of himself and his values don't seem to match how he treats the people working for him.
He always complains about not being able to afford paying people, but he always seems to have money to replace equipment, upgrade or buy new software, or buy lots of excess stuff we could potentially sell, while we're already full to the brim of stuff we are too understaffed to deal with and struggling to pay for storage space for. I also know he's constantly spending a massive amount of money on legal fees for a case he is pursuing. It's possible most of his money is being funnelled into that, loans, and other expenses. I'm not sure how much the business actually earns (possibly not a lot), but he's certainly only minimally spending on wages. However, he does seem to have money, even if it's possibly his partner's or from assets he sold, as elaborated upon below….
I also was in our work email account the other day while working on a project and happened to see emails from a realtor. He's been looking for a new place and was just complaining to me earlier that day, in the same conversation in the post title where he told me I make “a comfortable middle class wage,” about high rent prices here. I looked at the emails, out of curiosity (they were right there, already opened, and I was feeling frustrated and suspicious) and the place he and his partner seem to be buying, as well as the other units the realtor suggested, is a huge condo going for about $690,000. I don't know anything about house/condo buying prices (I can't even afford to rent a tiny apartment by myself), but that is extremely expensive, I believe?
A lot of different threads of info here, but I'm trying to puzzle out if a.) he really thinks he's a good dude treating me well as an employee but is clueless, b.) he's (and I don't like just throwing around this term but feels fitting) gaslighting me and totally screwing me over, or c.) he actually is financially struggling and covering this condo price is just from some other money source somehow.
Any thoughts on figuring out what the hell is going on here would be very much appreciated. Thanks!