I am currently a teller/customer service representative at a small local bank. I love my coworkers, its a very tight knit community at the office and they make me feel appreciated. They bought my fiancé and I tons of housewarming gifts when we bought our house, and they've continued to be kind and friendly. I live very close to my workplace, so I walk, and every time the weather is not perfect I am offered a ride home. Considering I live a thousand miles away from any family, my work “family” means a lot to me.
The pay is not great. In fact, with the duties I have been assigned during my year in this position, I believe it is awful. I open every type of deposit account, I route phone calls, I answer questions, you name it and I at the very least know how to do it because I have been trained in it. I literally close the bank like a supervisor every other week.
The problem arises where I make $11/hr and they refuse to open a full time teller position. When I started, there was a supervisor and a teller that were both full time workers and they recieved health insurance benefits. Now, after they have left and a new supervisor has been hired, there is no full time teller. I know how to do everything that the supervisor does, I DO almost everything the supervisor does, but they keep me at 30-34 hours a week with no benefits.
This is not sustainable. The work I do for the pay I receive causes me great stress. I like my coworkers and the customers, helping people makes me happy, but I can't keep doing it if I feel underappreciated and overworked by those who pay me. On top of that, with this bank being local, the room for advancement is almost nonexistent. I will never be the President, because it is basically a hereditary role. I will never be the Vice President, because it requires I become a lender, which I have no interest in. The highest rung on my ladder is Loan Processing, which is advertised by the company with the same pay rate as my current position.
So here is my dilemma. TL;DR How do I choose between working with people I like and an equal wage to duties peformed?
EXTRA: I am not in financial danger thanks to my fiancé working a more taxing, better paying job.