I'll keep this short because I'm on the clock. Heh.
I work for a big ol “media” company. I'm a retail merchandiser. I go into grocery stores, I scan things, I make them look good. And I guess I'm good at it.
I started in February. In May I was offered a promotion to be “Peer Support” which includes training new hires and covering stores we don't have anyone assigned to. The main job is covering stores. I'm in a big metropolitan area, and we are at 41% staff. There's a lot of area I have to cover each week. My week went from 20 store visits to 50. I put about 250 miles a week on my car.
In May, I was told the job is mine, I'm the only candidate. My boss told me it will take a little bit of time to go through but I will be paid retroactively to the day I was offered the job in May.
June goes by. Every time I ask, my boss says it should have gone through, but don't worry, you'll be paid retroactively. Most of July has gone by. They told me some confusing shit.
They said it's been sent up to some national guy for approval and it's been approved they just don't know when. Then j get told Friday last week that it was approved in early June, they just don't know why it's not in the computer system, whatever that means. I email my boss and his boss the week before asking if I will still be paid retroactively, it's been two months now. Didn't get an email back.
Today, my boss calls me and says it just didn't go through, someone dropped the ball and right now they're in a hiring freeze so the earliest foreseeable time it will go until effect is late August/early September. He also told me they would fight to get paid all the way back to May, but they're not promising it. He did not email this information.
My boss and his boss, some regional figure want to take me out to lunch next week. As if a god damn sandwich will fix any of this. Since I can't seem to get them to give me anything in writing yet I'm at least going to record the whole lunch meeting on my phone.
Ya know what I'm gonna tell them? Some personal events in my life that this whole thing has effected significantly.
I have a friend who bought a small manufactured home this year. It's 2 bed, 1 bath, kitchen, nice area, newly remodeled for $800/month. Me and him go way back, and I've been in recovery for alcoholism and I'll have a year in September. He plans to move to California and I can move in the house and pay him rent. I've been living in halfway houses and rehab for almost four years now. He wants to help me live a good life and I'm so grateful for it.
But, this whole house deal was riding on me getting the pay raise or not, and now I don't think I'll be able to afford it and it's not going to come in time before he moves out and has to rent it to someone else.
So I'm going to miss out on affordable housing, something that's a fantasy to people my age and without a degree, all because of this corporate bullshit.
I've lost all my motivation to even work. I'm taking off an hour early today. I'm doing piss poor work. I'm looking for something else. I like this job but I'm really pissed off as an employee by this.
Any tips on how I can strong arm these people to actually pay me back to when I took on the new responsibilities? What can I do?