I’ve been in the market for a part-time job for awhile now, considering my regular job is experiencing slowness in sales which cuts into my hours. (I operate a Heidelberg Speedmaster printing press).
So, just last week, I got hired for a part-time job (20-25 hours a week) which involves running a much smaller press (an AB Dick). I make 25 dollars an hour at my regular job, but since the press was much smaller and the work easier----primarily business cards----I didn’t expect to make nearly as much, and asked for 15 dollars per hour.
In the process of reviewing my application/resume, my employer scratched his head and said he’d rather pay me 17 dollars an hour.
I certainly didn’t complain about that.
Has this ever happened to anyone else? I’ve worked mostly union jobs all my life so negotiating a pay wage was never part of getting hired, so I’m not familar with the ins and outs. I did think it was interesting that I got more than what I asked for, though.
Yes, but it was in the 90s, in Colorado, and places were pretty much dying for anyone who had any experience at all. I more than once got job offers for more than I was asking. Not a ton more, but a few thousand dollars. And at least one of them, I got a raise within a couple months as well.
After my freshman year in college I wanted to spend the summer working as a stagehand in Atlantic City. Up until this point I had been making minimum wage at a series of dead end jobs. I was expecting an hourly rate from the stagehand gig of around $10/hour, which was a significant increase over the $3.75 I was making, or something in that neighborhood. Imagine my surprise when the starting rate was $17-something/hour. I didn’t actually ask for a figure, but I nearly fell out of my chair when they offered me the job at that rate.
It made more sense to me when I started and was working with guys for whom that was their career, even though I was just the summer help.
I received a good deal higher salary than I requested at my current job, which I was hired for at about the bottom of the recession; my employer wanted to make sure I didn’t bolt as soon as times were better.
It happened to me once. My employer put me in a higher job classification than the position that was originally listed. I believe it was more of an issue of them trying to hang on to their budget than to make me happy.
My husband was just approached in December about doing some contract work. He really needed the job and was unsure about the going rate for his particular skill set, so he named a lowish hourly rate he could live with. The guy said okay, but said that after a brief trial period he planned to pay him more–naming a figure almost 30% higher than what my spouse had suggested. We knew then that he’d guessed too low.
And after the trial period the guy said he’d just pay him that higher rate for all the work, including his trial period (essentially backdating the "raise). So, you know, hooray.
It’s happened before to me–it’s especially prone to happening with medium-to-high skill and low supply-of-labor jobs, I bet, or ones with significant training overhead. The employer doesn’t want to take the risk that you’ll bail if your skillset is sufficiently rare or involves enough work on his part to fine-tune.
Back when I had just graduated college, I had a job paying me somewhere around $20K/yr. It was a temporary position contingent on funding and the funding was not renewed. I started sending out resumes and was offered another job at another University which I knew paid higher wages than the one I was coming from. I asked for $25K and they gave me $26K.
Right out of college and looking for a “real” job I took a job at a printing press knowing it would be temporary. I asked for $10/hr and the president of the company said he really liked me and really wanted to keep me around so he’d hire me at $12/hr. I felt pretty bad when I quit a month later.
When I was 7 or 8 years old, I got the idea to earn some money shoveling snow from sidewalks. I asked for a nickel. I don’t think I got turned away from a single door, and I think maybe one older lady paid me a dime, and everyone else paid at least a quarter, and several paid a dollar.
I was young enough that I had no idea the value of money, and it was around 1970. A nickel was worth a lot more then, but still not worth that amount of work.
After having gained a few years’ experience in my field I was out of work and went to some job interviews. At one interview that went very well, I was asked what my expected salary was. I said something about 15% higher than what I had been making. The guy told me right away that “I think you’re selling yourself way short.”
I ended up not getting that job, but at subsequent interviews I started asking for a lot more, and eventually got it.
I used to work at the races for a bookmaker. The first time he had a huge winning day and gave all the staff a tax free cash bonus was a big surprise. Over the years it became expected. It was called “getting a sling.”