Long time lurker, first time poster.
So I was finishing up college in the midwest. It was the spring semester of 2020 and I had accepted a position with a company of a couple hundred people in a small town in the middle of nowhere, hours away from where I was currently living. I asked for compensation slightly above average for grads from my college program. I had pretty good grades and internship experience . I ended up agreeing on $1k less than the average. A month later COVID hits and I get told I would be placed on hiring freeze until August. Alright, I guess just something I’ll have to live with. Well the beginning of June rolls around and I get called and asked if I could start at the beginning of July. But they need me to take a 10% pay cut through the end of the year. The one question I ask, “Is everyone in the company taking a pay cut?”. “Yes” is the reply from my potential boss on the other end of the line. I think, if everyone is doing it then I guess I can live with it. What else was a guy to do? The job market was completely dead and the outlook of finding another job anytime soon was bleak.
Fast forward to getting hired. I get presented with a new job contract with my new pay and told to sign. I look and the pay cut isn’t quite 10%. It’s rounded to the nearest thousand. I begin to think something is fishy, but I sign the contract. I start training and all seems fine and once I start to meet a few new coworkers I get comfortable enough with them to start poking around. “How have things been here since Covid? Any negative impacts on the business?” I find out they laid off a bunch of people right when it had started, but am told that COVID was probably used as a guise to fire people that weren’t great workers or didn’t fit well with the company. Interesting. No mention of pay cuts though. The next day I get worked up enough to ask one of my coworkers I was starting to become friends with about pay cuts point blank. “What pay cuts?” Is the response I receive. I then explain to him how I’m getting fucked over. He then tells me about how he was one of the people who were laid off. And they brought him back in different position.
I finish my job training the rest of the week without mentioning anything again to anyone and start in my new position while trying to figure out if saying anything to my boss will do anything to benefit me. He lied to my face before I ever started. Why would he have any moral compass to make things right? And although my blood is boiling and I want to quit this job immediately but I’m hesitant. I mean what sort of future do you really have with a company that’s going to do whatever is in their best interest and doesn’t mind if they have to fuck you to do it? But Covid is a thing and the job market is still dead. And no one wants to hire a college grad with two weeks of experience so where am I going to go? So I stay in my job and vow to never do more than the bare minimum job requirement for this company.
As far as my job goes it completely sucks and I dread coming to work every day. It is nothing like what my expectations were and the work is mind numbingly shit. I’m not working on half the stuff I was told I would be either. Mind you it doesn’t help that I’ve moved to a new town where I know nobody. My 2 year girlfriend and I broke up prior to the move. And any opportunity for meeting people is nonexistent with Covid in full effect. Oh and not to mention I’m living in a hotel until I find a spot to live. I stop looking for apartments though the minute I learn I’m being lied to because I refuse to have anything keeping me at this shit job. I let this be the state of my life for far too long and end up living in the hotel for seven months basically in a state of depression the whole time suffering through the shit job.
Then the end of the year comes. At my end of the year review I get bumped back up to my pay I was suppose to receive when I started. I find out my job will be changing drastically and I see this as a big time positive. I actually start to not dread coming to work. I decide to give the job a chance for another year and commit to the town and job. I get an apartment and life starts to seem better. But it’s always in the back of my head. They lied to me and fucked me over so why put much effort into my work? Why meet their deadlines? I lose any motivation to develop in my career because I don’t want the company to be fit from it.
I see them fuck over many people while I’m there for the year and a half. They try to get the only HR person in the company for the last 8 years to take a 5 digit pay cut because they hired someone over her to run the department. She was smart enough to give them the bird and find a new job. I watched them give a management position to someone within the company who gets trained in and works the position for three months only to have the higher ups change their minds not long after. I watch them fire a guy two weeks before Christmas because they don’t want to pay him any of the time he’d be off. Nonstop turnover at certain positions and job postings that are open for months because the company won’t raise their pay rates. Not to mention horrible benefits. And a lot of people who work here don’t care about their job because most people are looking to get out. But it’s a small town and there aren’t many opportunities nearby.
Fast forward to the end of 2021. Time for my end of the year review. My boss tells me everything has been good. My works been good. They’re happy with my progress. They hand me a sheet to show me my new salary. It’s a 4.7% raise… the equivalent of core inflation for the year. I get told I’m getting a $1500 bonus to bring my salary up to where it should have been for the past year (because of the company not reaching profit sharing goals.) I tell him I’m not happy with that. I let them know I’m being paid less than the average college grad from my school would be projected to be making and I’ve been working there for a year and a half. You’re happy with the work I’ve done so I think I should be making a little more than the next warm body that walks through the door. I also let my boss know I’m aware that I was lied to. My boss wants to talk with upper management and get back to me.
My boss sets up a meeting a couple days later and leads off asking me how long I’ve known they lied to me. Then tells me it doesn’t help anyone to be resentful for the year and half I’ve worked there. Deflects blame onto upper management although the words came from my bosses mouth and then goes back to pretending nothing ever happened. They then slide me my new salary offer. They decided to take away my bonus and add $2k to the salary. Basically the equivalent of telling me to go fuck myself. Then tells me I haven’t been developing as well as they thought I’d be, contradicting everything they said in my initial meeting. My boss then has the audacity to tell me I received a big raise of 11% the previous year and asks if I’m expecting double digit raises every year. I also get fed the line that they gave everyone around the same percentage raise and that my boss considers us all equal in the department. Also try’s to say profit sharing is part of my salary even though it’s not guaranteed money as was proven that previous year by receiving nothing for three quarters. Also tells me I shouldn’t be making a certain amount of money because they had to work 7 years before making that amount of money. My boss obviously has zero grasp on the concept of inflation.
For the last month I have given less fucks than ever at that job. I have no incentive to work hard because “everyone gets treated equal in our department”. Currently on pace to miss a month long deadline by at least a week. I can’t get past the fact I’m getting fucked repeatedly. I’m tired of showing up everyday and not giving a single fuck about what I do. The job search has begun but no matter what I’m getting out of this toxic shit hole when my lease is up in a couple months.
Thought I’d share and let everyone know always do what’s best for you. Employers will fuck you the second they get the chance. And don’t stick with a company that doesn’t respect you. I would have rather been out of work since the beginning of covid than turned into the nihilistic prick I’ve become because of this company and the asshats who manage it.