Well, I've worked for this company for around 3 years, starting right after the company got off the ground.
I photographed vintage and antique furniture for an online auction company, which didn't have much of a photography department when I showed up.
Over the course of working here, I was promoted to head of warehouse photography, and began training new photographers, as well as many other things (repairing vehicles that were to be photographed, setting up and repairing the internet, repairing electronic equipment, repairing plumbing, building items, repairing furniture as well as picking up the slack that other photographers left behind. I also MOVE all of the furniture around the warehouse by myself. Granite top buffet that needs to be moved across the warehouse? All me.
All without a raise, for 3 years.
None of us got raises actually, as the people not working in the warehouse were on commission (we do sales inside the warehouse my domain and outside sales in peoples homes, which gets commission, but since I was in the warehouse exclusively, I never got any commission).
So, after 3 years, they decided to get rid of commission (which went over like a lead balloon to our outside sales team and photographers) and give us raises.
Before I went into my performance review (which I have had 2x a year for the past 3 years, they have always been extremely positive), another employee stopped me in the hall and said "oh, you didn't see the email, they've cancelled all the raise meetings because they think we deserve more money.
GREAT! I walked into the office ready to reschedule my meeting (I had all sorts of documentation of things i had done in the past, as well as glassdoor statistics from other people in a similar position to me.
As soon as I sat down, they said "we got youa .33 raise and that's the best we can do". After 3 years of no raises, I was offered a 2.4% raise.
I was also told that my promotion was completely fake when I brought up that I never got a raise for it (and began training other photographers, as well as creating write ups and short videos to help new photographers grasp concepts to help them work more efficiently).
Then, they told me that there was basically nowhere to "go" to from my current position, no way to "move up" so to speak, and that I shouldn't expect much else.
When I mentioned "the email" about waiting to have our meetings because they felt we deserved more money, I was immediately told "you weren't supposed to see that".
The job pays more than the average around here ($13.50), but I'm in quite a strange position.
I'm upset that I got such a small raise after 3 years of beaming reviews with no pay increase. Some of the outside photographers are actually taking a pay CUT after doing the math on their commissions (one took around a $4.00 an hr paycut after they did all of the math, they were basically told the same thing I was).
I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I don't want to continue to do everything I can for a company that doesn't seem to particularly care about what I do, but I also don't want to walk out the door and burn a potentially great reference.
Apparently nearly everyone else got MASSIVE increases in pay compared to what I got. My numbers were still good, and I'm still doing everything I've always been doing....could they simply be trying to push me out?
We have had a LOT of large changes in how we do things in the past few months, photographers from other districts (in our company) came to our district and mentioned massive layoffs, which immediately stopped once people filed for unemployment. Then supposedly, they switched to cutting hours, cutting commission and offering low raises to "coerce" people to leave (I was told about this around a month before my raise was offered to me).
Should I read the writing on the wall and run for the hills? It seems like I'm not going to get anywhere if I stay here, other than having a job that just barely pays the bills while I destroy my body (I already got a slap tear while carrying a console record player and continued coming into work to help photograph small items during my recovery).
I'm just not sure what to do in this situation, I've never had bosses (I have 3) act this way. I asked who I needed to talk to about a raise that suits my input in the company, and was told "sorry".
Am I being self-entitled? Am I digging my own grave, or am I jusitfiably frustrated?
Submitted June 13, 2017 at 10:34AM by Throwawayapril85 http://ift.tt/2soSIN9
