Do you remember the worst annual raise
you ever got? I do, and it bugs me to
this very day. Actually I have two, for
different reasons. Let me explain.
My first few jobs were fast food. My very first was at Arby's, making $3.35 an
hour in 1987. After that, I spent a
number of summers working at Bob Evans (a home style sit-down restaurant). I don't remember how much I made there, but
it was in the $4-5 range, maybe $6-something by the end. One summer I was interning at DuPont in the
Mylar Casting Crew making really good money, but I only got that job because my
Dad worked there, not through any merits of my own. I'm not going to count any of those.
My first REAL job was at Etak, "The Digital Map
Company," as a Cartographic Technician, making $11 an hour in 1996. We made maps for in-car navigation systems long
before Google Maps was a thing. Anyway,
I did great there, moving up to Cartographic Technician II, and getting a
Quality Assurance certification. But my
first raise on the job? $0.13 per hour. Supposedly, that was technically a $0.25
raise, but I had only been there a few months, so they cut it in half. That works out to a 1.09% raise. If the raises came multiple times per year,
that would have been fine, but now I'd be stuck with a half a raise for a whole
year until the next review!
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Luckily, I soon left that job and got an instant 40%
raise when I joined Intel. The raises at
Intel were mostly good. There were two major exceptions: in 2003 (post-9/11) and 2009 (2008 financial crisis), Intel was hurting
and the whole company got a 0% raise. It
really sucked, but I can't take that personally.
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Then came my most ridiculous raise ever. In 2018 I got a raise, if you can call it
that, of 0.007%. It worked out to less
than $0.01 per hour. What is even the
point of doing all the paperwork for that?
This too, had a reason behind it, though, so I technically can't take it
personally, either: I was at the top of the pay range for my grade, so my manager
didn't have a choice. If I stayed in my
current job, I would never get a raise again, until the company increased the
pay range.
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After that, I switched roles to a job with more space in
the pay range, so the raises have been coming again, but it's also a more challenging
job, so they've been on the small side, still.
All in all, though, I can't complain. Every raise is a raise, and I've gotten more
large ones than small ones, so I'm happy. Sometimes, ya just gotta laugh, though.
How about you?
