The Raise

Wow... one little line in a blog post sure generates discussion I didn't think about. Just to clarify a little bit:

* Because my job is no longer unionized, my raises are merit-based. I thought this was extremely cool last year because I work hard and I deserve more than Joe Schmoe who sits there and does minimal work and gets a guaranteed 4-5% raise. Surely I'd be recognized beyond that!

* The raises are figured out on a scale of 1-5 (of course the company has cute little names like "meets expectations" and so on... but there's 5 of them, so I'm sticking to my 1-5 analogy). In 2006, after having been at The Restaurant for 5 months, my boss rated me a 4. He said he couldn't rate me a 5 because I still needed something to strive for or something like that. Still, 4 is a "B" performance - nothing to complain about.

* I was rated 4 in December 2006, and my raise kicked in in April 2007: a whopping 3.5%. To this day, I am still making about 30 cents per hour less than I was making at the RCC. Still, it's a trade-off because a) I'm so much less stressed and b) I make a ton of overtime here. I'm definitely bringing home more money.

* This past December, I was rated 5 (the only person in my location to do so). The raise hasn't kicked in yet, and I don't know what it is. I've got my fingers crossed for 5%... but even that doesn't seem that great considering everything I did last year. Even at only 4%, it'll still bump me over what I was making at the RCC... and within $3 of what Scott makes.

Anyway, when I was talking in that last entry about justifying a raise, at this point, whatever I do won't be reflected in my pay for another 13 months... and that's only if I'm still at The Restaurant in 13 months. It's sort of academic.