Walking Disaster

We’re getting down to the end of the year, and for most companies, this is when most people start using their sick days while they’re technically out of state, and Irish-exiting their company Christmas party. But this is also when most boards and executive teams are finalizing budgets for the coming year, which means it’s time to get the ball rolling on any salary changes. Now, some people are lucky enough to have a union to negotiate on their behalf, or they have good team members to work with. Because of this, I was always the person who thought joint negotiations were the way to go. I still believe that to a certain extent, but recent experiences have taught me to be wary of tying myself to another person when it comes to meetings and negotiations.

Don’t let that opening fool you, in a day and age of disaster stories, this can actually be considered a success. It was a little difficult, especially because we are a two-person department (see previous rants about this crazy, backward, stick in the mud), so I’m inherently tied to her, and while I’m glad I tried a united front, sometimes you have to just give them enough rope to hang themself.

Here’s the thing: I’m still of the mindset that when equal coworkers negotiate together for higher pay, it is much harder to turn down. In our case, we were previously a four-person department (remote sales), and due to territory rearranging, our territories are due to double in the new year and the company isn’t expecting to fill the other spots until the tail end of 2025. We had two days of strategy and marketing meetings to go over this and how we can have more support going forward. Since our boss and other executives were all going to be in the same room for the first time in a while, I figured it was the perfect moment to discuss all this. I had discussed with my Karen coworker weeks before, to make sure we were on the same page, then I put together as many reasons as possible for a raise in our base salary.

Reasons include our territory’s growth percentage, the onboarding cost of new hires that could be wrapped into our pay, how we generate revenue for the company, etc., etc. I vetted my reasons with the usual suspects, and after a fair amount of shitting myself, was ready for these meetings. There was no time to bring it up the first day, so I mentioned to my counterpart that I wanted to bring it up the next day as soon as a natural opportunity arises. That’s when she started backtracking. “We should wait for our annual reviews.” “We don’t want to come across as money-grubbing.” “You don’t know where the economy is going next year, it’s better to have a job with a lower salary than none at all.”

Now, it doesn’t take much to send me into a downward spiral of self-loathing and second-guessing myself. So I originally believed her and was going to bite my tongue. I’m not used to corporate environments, and I’m certainly not used to the industry I work in, so now all the wind is out of my proverbial sails. Until the next day.

Now I’ll admit, I was already quite fed up with a few other things in my personal life, so when the time came to strategize our brand new mega-quadruple-gofuckyourself-territories, I figured it was the perfect time to bring up what I wanted. When I started to ask how we would be compensated for our doubled workload, I got loudly cut off with the same reasons of wanting to wait for the year-end reviews. And that’s when it hit me, she wanted to wait for the performance reviews, because she was still angling to be my manager, aka have a higher salary than me, and I had one of those crystallizing moments when you realize it’s time to trim the fat.

If there’s one thing to thank my mother and her family for, it’s my unhealthily high threshold for bullshit and what is worth reacting to. They also forced me to spend an inordinate amount of time around lawyers so even when I do reach said threshold, I can still be calm and articulate. So even with that moment of clarity, I knew that the perfect way to differentiate myself would be to err on the side of logic. I took the time to point out that this was the right time to talk about our base salaries and commission quotas, especially considering the multiple territories we covered all showed positive growth, while the company was operating at a flat net. I made a conscious effort to stay away from emotional words and only use ones like “equity”, “investment”, and “value” while sticking to hard numbers like growth percentages and market shares. Even though that chainsmoking cow kept fighting me on it, she made the mistake of using words like “deserve”, “earned”, or “want” which only served to highlight the differences between us further. One of my prouder moments was when she cut me off mid-sentence to make the case for waiting until year-end reviews, I calmly refuted her, mentioning that those are performance-based, and this is account-based. Also, if our amount of accounts were going to double, then the money they would’ve used to onboard new salesmen would be a much better investment if wrapped into our salaries instead.

Every time she tried to fight me, I let her rant herself out, then would redirect the conversation to my point, highlighting what I believe is something to be considered, especially before our boss (who was in the room and watching this all go down) had to present his budget proposals for the new year. And since I come from the Here’s Some More Rope Institute I let her rant and get emotional, while I was able to stay calm and analytical. I reiterated that if we were going to wait until the year-end review to talk raises then I would take that moment to highlight my territory’s growth, as well as the fact that the average cost of living is expected to rise 9% next year, but since we’re only discussing workload, I will wait to do that. Amazingly, he agreed and will have numbers for us by the end of the year, but he agreed to a substantially higher base and a more attainable commission quota which he, along with HR, will discuss with us individually. Seems great right?

But apparently, that wasn’t what my counterpart wanted to hear, eventually insinuating that she deserved higher salary and management responsibilities because she had been with the company longer. We had the same amount of experience, but mine was across multiple industries. We have the same job title and the same salary, but she has no degree. All that took was a mild reminder of these facts, thus giving me even more credibility, and her coffin was nailed shut. She is resistant to change and refuses to adapt to new leadership, mainly because this new leadership is focused on fixing inequities in the company, and for someone who used to receive favoritism from the previous dipshits, that’s the kiss of death. After two days of meetings, my boss now respects me enough to initiate a call afterward and reassure me that no, she would never be my manager. And he would like to start an open dialogue to see what else I noticed in the company that errs on the side of toxic. Maybe I’m a fool for believing my bosses about the raise, but I’ve made a point to stay on them about it, and I’ll be involved in setting my quotas for the coming year which is huge. It’s also nice to just feel listened to and included, and like my voice is being heard. I know this might be a redundant post, considering I’ve broached this topic before, but that was a total long shot, this was much more calculated.

So thanks to one day, I now have the trust of two new bosses, who ask my opinion on everything from marketing ideas to previous managerial methods. I potentially have a raise and a more accessible commission quota to hit so like…double raise. And my counterpart effectively shot herself in the foot. Bring on 2025!