I'm at my first big boy job out of college and I've been here for almost 2 years now. I'm a government contractor and my job requires 10-15% of travel for our contracts. Halfway through 2015 and through all of 2016, I exceeded my travel requirement by a huge margin. I was always willing and ready to go at a moments notice when they needed me, wherever they needed me to go and even stepped up to take on another contract that no one else wanted to do.
Now though, the travel isn't getting to be worth it. I receive per diem for every trip I go on but even that's not much anymore. Other people in my office have decided they aren't going to travel at all and with other people quitting, a lot of travel has fallen, and is going to fall, on me in the future. I've spent at least 2, almost 3 months on the road and not at home because of this job. I'm also the only person who has consistently traveled to the Middle East this past year for our company. They've now started to want to send 2 people and had an incredibly hard time finding someone to go with me one time, much less continue in the future.
I've become kind of specialized and if I got a new job, this company would be kind of screwed without me since they have no one else who has the experience I do and can travel like I do. The only other people who have the experience are the project manager (and he has so many balls in the air that he can't be gone for more than a day) and a supervisor who has flat out said that she is not traveling anymore. The only other person who travels as much as I do, does it because he trains people on the use of their equipment. He doesn't go and do repairs or calibrations, no one does except for me now.
I want to keep traveling but it's not financially worth it anymore, how do I convey this to my manager and ask for a raise without giving an ultimatum? He does not respond well to ultimatums, other people have tried. He has also called us drones and butts in seats. I've been sending out applications to find a new job and have a line on a new one opening up in a few months. I don't want to leave but I will if I have too.
TL;DR I travel excessively for my job and I want to convey that in a way that will give me decent raise.
Submitted January 17, 2017 at 09:18AM by Blue-Phone-Box http://ift.tt/2ixiBWo
