Got a promotion! And got SHAFTED!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

This. ^
I’m very happy where I am. If my boss where to retire (he hints at it) the people that I sort of supervise have nearly begged me to take his position.

umm… No way. Endless meetings is the real turn off.

Oh, I would ‘manage’ for a bit. I do to a degree in that I do direct some stuff. I suspect there would be a new org chart.

Condolences to the OP. I have managed in a previous life, and I didn’t like it. Ended up getting laid off. Getting laid off in that situation turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

22

He said he was going to be cutting back on teaching the seminars once they were over. He also said that there was no incentive to stay late anymore, although managers usually stay a little bit behind. To me that means he won’t be putting in as many hours.

23

Another word for “salaried” is “sucker”. This isn’t really a huge secret of the business world.

24

Happened to me once, too. Worked retail for a short jog, and went back to the same company in management a year or so later. Made $4.25/hour base (plus 1.5X on Sundays) in the first stint, then calculated what I made after training, per hour in the second stint.

$4.34/hour, working 62-65 hours a week salaried, and 2 Sundays a month.

25

I’m there with that. Happened to me once. Boss told me he wanted to promote me, and that he felt I could be taking on more responsibility. Naturally, I asked about the changes in compensation and benefits.

He looked at me like I’d peed on his foot, and explained that there would be ‘changes’ in my compensation package. I asked what they would be. He did not want to talk about that, he wanted to talk about my new responsibilities. I explained that I had not yet accepted the position, and that I would not until I felt that I understood the whole picture.

He looked at me like I’d peed on his OTHER foot, and explained the package.

In which I found myself in the OP’s position, and respectfully declined the promotion. He asked why. I told him “because I cannot afford to lose the overtime and side perks, they being necessary to my household budget.”

“Oh, so you feel that you can’t handle the added responsibility?” he asked.

“No, I cannot afford to lose the overtime and side perks, they being necessary to my household budget.”

“So you don’t feel that you’re up to the job?”

“No, I cannot afford to lose the overtime and side perks, they being necessary to my household budget.”

“I don’t understand your resistance to a higher position in the company.”

“I. Can’t. Afford. A. Pay. Cut.”

“But this position is a move UP, and looks great on a resume! How can you turn it DOWN?”

Wound up transferring to another department.

I sincerely hope the OP’s management is better and more understanding than mine was.

26

I found out about the promotion early last week when it was announced to the whole company on the company intranet, which I rarely check. I had people congratulating me before I even knew what was going on. It was effective immediately upon announcement.

I asked my boss (immediate superior) to confirm how it would affect my pay and she said she’d check, but she was sure it would be an increase.

It was late Friday night (after my now unpaid overtime) when I found out that I’d be getting a pay cut. I’ll have to talk to my boss today to see if anything can be done, but it’s kind of a done deal now that it’s already been announced. Never got a chance to decline.

Really don’t wanna go to work today.
If one more person congratulates me I might throw up.

Also, more or less what Honey said regarding staying back late. So, thanks Honey. :slight_smile:

Also, thanks for the wry chuckle, Master Wang-Ka.

27

I sorta did this once, also a big mistake. My boss wanted to promote me. I was happy where I was, doing something that I thought was fun, and that I was good at. He pointed out that he was leaving, and that if I didn’t move up I would be seen as a person to move out, which may have been correct. Also, I was supposed to want his job.

Now there was no down side in pay, but basically I went from doing a job I loved and was good at to doing a job I hated and was not so good at. I lasted three months.

ETA: I quit and went to another company.

28

surely they cant change your terms and conditions unilaterally without you having a chance to refuse?

29

many (most?) employment is “at will,” without a contract. Exceptions are things like union jobs, etc.

30

My dad experienced this kind of “promotion” back in the late 1970s. He was a salesman for a multi-national business machine manufacturer and was one of the Top 10 salesmen in the entire company, earning him some pretty tasty commissions. Well, the company gave him a promotion to general manager of a branch, which meant a significant bump in base pay and a move across the country for the family. The problem was, he was no longer getting those big sales commissions—apparently in that company’s business model, branch managers got commissions based on service calls but not sales. So it wound up being a net loss in salary, just as the national economy was starting to go into a recession. He eventually demoted himself back to sales and quit the company entirely a couple years after that, although he did spend a while trying to make it work.

For myself, I had a sort of sideways promotion a few years ago that led to no good. I was very happy in a role as safety supervisor for what was known in the company as “Special Projects.” Those were all the jobs that were of a relatively small contract value. The three years I spent in that department were the best of my career with that company. At the tail end of that period, I got a new boss, who flat-out admitted to me that he thought Special Projects was a waste of time as a department and, in fairly short order, he “promoted” me out of that position and into a full-time role on a big project. Now I can honestly say this was probably the best project in the company at the time in terms of what I had to deal with, but it meant that instead of setting my own hours and constantly getting to see new things and new challenges all over southern Alberta, I got to go to the same location day after day, starting earlier and putting in significantly longer hours, for the same wage. When that job wrapped, I got moved to another similar position, with no talk of going back to the job I actually liked. Every subsequent move made the job just a little bit worse and over about a four year period, I came to hate my boss and dislike the job which, mercifully, I no longer hold.

To paraphrase Captain Kirk, don’t let them promote you. If you’re in a position you like, and the compensation is good, do not let The Powers That Be move you out of there. And if they try, develop an exit strategy and leave before they have a chance to dump you.

31

I declined a few mgmt gigs on the basis of it changing my health insurance and benefits. New (crappier) medical plan coverage areas, no 401k matching, required crappy deductible plans instead of choices, losing stock performance bonuses…even going from salaried worker-bee to salaried manager was a net loss.

32

Back in the late 90s I was doing a bit of IT work part time. The Customer Service manager quit and I was given the job full time, but kept my IT duties. Then the Operations guy quit and I was given his job too. In neither case was there a pay raise. Every attempt to address that I was now doing 3 jobs full time without a bump in pay was looked at like I was an ungrateful prick. So began a serious bout of fucking off of epic proportions. I still say Fuck you Frank all these years later.

33

As much as I’ve seen and heard of this as a real issue and reason to turn down a promotion, I know many more people who end up needing to find new employment and find themselves taking huge paycuts and never being able to get to a higher income tier because they have no management experience.

My highest paying job was dependent on working 7 days a week and getting a lot of overtime, after many years of raises. When that place went out of business, I was looking at 32-40 hours a week at low non-management hourly wages, in some cases a 2/3 paycut. Happens to a lot of people I know.

I would consider the earlier suggestion to use it to get another job making more somewhere else.

34

Slight hijack, but I’d love to see those lines end the DOUBLE INDEMNITY exchange where Edward G. Robinson (a) congratulates Fred MacMurray on yet again being the top salesman and (b) offers him a promotion with the worst sales pitch ever.

“How’d you like a fifty-dollar cut in salary?”
“Do I laugh now, or wait until it gets funny?”
“I’m serious.”
“Me? Why pick on me?”
“Because I’ve got a crazy idea you might be good at the job.”
“That’s crazy all right.”
“What’s troubling you is that fifty-buck cut, isn’t it?”
“That’d trouble ANYBODY!”
"You’re not interested. You don’t want to work with your brains. All you want to do is work with your finger on the doorbell for a few bucks more a week."

35

Moving from hourly to manager has the added bonus that often gets overlooked: if you don’t work you still get paid. Got to spend a couple hours to take the kids to the doctor? Still getting paid. Dentist appointment on Friday afternoon? Still on the clock. Got a flat tire on the way to work? Salary is still rolling in. Taking a long lunch to go home for a nooner? Cha-ching!

36

In a lot of organizations, managers fill in timecards too. And get fired for lying on them. And, in the organizations I’ve worked for, get their companies very expensive penalties for falsifying labor charging information on a federal contract.

So no, salaried pay is not license to screw off.

37

Yeah, the hypothetical “If I have more to do, I stay late; but if I get everything done, I’m free to knock off early. It all evens out in the end” situation is a pipe-dream. I’ve never worked anywhere (or heard of anyone working anywhere) where salaried folks could just cut out whenever they wanted.

38

A smart old boss of mine told me (in relation to funding) that you never, ever, say you can manage if they threaten to cut your budget. Instead you say something is going to get dumped, and the thing to dump is the thing people want the most.

So the thing to do in your situation is to tell the bosses that requests X, Y and Z are not going to get done in a reasonable time. That puts it on them. Then you still goof off - working fewer hours at the same salary gives you an effective hourly pay raise.

39

The last 3 places I have worked have been like this. It is common in engineering environments in my experience. Yes, those who abuse the flexibility get weeded out but it is a nice perk if you have children and need the occasional afternoon to attend to an illness or school function.

40

Oh, occasionally, sure. But most times when people mention the benefits of salaried positions, they talk about how “some weeks you work 50 weeks, some you work 30.” In reality, the situation turns out to be “Some weeks you work 50+ hours, but even when you don’t have a lot to do, we need you hear for at least 40 hours.”