I left a job where I was happy and liked the work, my supervisor, and my co-workers simply because I wanted more money. I had been there for more than eleven years. If we wanted a raise, we had to ask for one. If we didn’t, TPTB assumed that we were happy with the salary that we were getting, so why should they waste their money giving us additional money that we didn’t even want? Every time I asked for a raise, I was given one.
Until I wasn’t given one. My supervisor told me that the company had changed their way of giving raises. Instead of us having to ask for raises, a committee was formed that would evaluate all of us (approx 85 employees) at the same time in order to decide who should get raises. Unfortunately, my supervisor said that the committee hadn’t been able to meet, because someone was always out sick or on vacation or on a business trip. I said that I didn’t think that was a good way of doing things. My supervisor said, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
For six weeks, I waited and waited to hear that the committee had met, and I was going to get a raise. I heard nothing. When I asked friends for advice as to whether I should look for another job, they always said that it was up to me. Until I asked my uncle, who said, “If you stay there, they will lose all respect for you.”
During those six weeks, so many co-workers quit, and they all went around the office saying, “I got tired of waiting for the committee to meet.” So I started looking for another job, and when I found one at Company X, it was my turn to say that I got tired of waiting for the committee to meet. This was in July. The office manager was very upset when I gave notice and promised that the committee would meet before the end of the year. I said that I didn’t want to wait that long. (I found out the following March that the committee still hadn’t met.) So I went around the office many, many times telling everyone that I got tired of waiting for the committee to meet and adding, “Do you believe it? My new company will be paying me more money than this company, even though they don’t know me at all, while this company, where I’ve worked for over eleven years, won’t give me even a wooden nickel.”
Unfortunately, my new job at Company X didn’t work out, and I left there after a few months. I found a job at Company Y that paid more than Company X, but that didn’t work out either. Then I found a job at Company Z that paid more than Company Y, and I stayed there for over four years.
I eventually found out that the company with the committee that never managed to meet moved to a different state a couple of years after I left, and before they moved, they fired practically all of their employees. If I had stayed there, I would have been fired. So, no matter how things worked out at Companies X, Y, and Z, I was better off having quit my job that the company with the committee that never managed to meet.
