Dont ask for a raise if your pay is low
I've mentioned this before, the chief circumstance why I quit my long held security job back in 2005 : I essentially asked for a raise in the form of working a security assignment myself 72 hours - 7 nights. Normally it's broken up for two people, one person gets 40HRS regular, the other gets 32. In the final 2-1/2 years before I decided to quit, most of it was spent being sent new trainees to work that extra 32 hours. What would be all of 7 - 10 people, just couldn't handle it for some reason or another. Either not showing up consistently or quitting altogether after a few days. I decided to walk into my boss's office and said, look, this is rediculous, why not just let me work the whole site's allocated hours by myself. They said no. Which essentially was a message to me that the same negative resonse would be the case had I directly asked for a raise, even though my expenses were literally devaluing my paycheck by the week. The best thing for anyone to do is quit, regardless of the consequence. I seriously doubt anyone can make a strong and consistent case to keep working a job under those circumstances. Take this recent news story : http://www.wsbtv.com/news/13766304/detail.html That's what you get for being persistent. Normally people say to be, but does anyone consider what can happen if you run into the wrong kind of boss? Obviously not.
How often do you hear of an employer killing their employees like that? Usually it's the employee going berserk and killing co-workers after they quit or got laid off. The likelihood that either would happen to you is small. And an employer is not allowed to let an employee work 72 hours, 7 days a week. That's too many hours for one person to work. All of our clients are employers and none of them allow that. It's not safe. There may be a law against that too, but I'm not sure offhand. I also know when my father was a truck driver, he could only work so many hours at one crack too because it wasn't safe and it was not allowed. You should have documented on paper what your accomplishments were and what you were doing in your job at the time that warranted a raise in pay. Then you should have asked for a raise. I guarantee you probably would have gotten a different response. Asking to work two jobs is not the same as asking for a raise.
How often do you hear of an employer killing their employees like that? Usually it's the employee going berserk and killing co-workers after they quit or got laid off. You could have said the same thing after the first instance of an employee killing their fellow work-mates. Now it's almost commonplace. The point of the post is to consider all things before offering blanket advice.
Your subject "Don't ask for a raise if your pay is low" is a blanket statement. What is all of your evidence to back up that statement? I disagree with that statement. If your pay is low, you SHOULD ask for a raise. You did not ask for a raise - you just asked for more hours (basically the number of hours of another full-time employee). Two different things, x.
It is essentially the same thing. They said no. They would have also said no and gave some lame reason why - if I asked for a pay raise. As far as security goes, anyone who knows the job, knows you don't always work 40 hours or under, most times you're asked to cover as many as 2 or 3 shifts over the course of a given week. Why? People as I said all too often quit because they can't stay awake every night, come in to work late, or need to leave early before their shift is over. All three instances I've experienced and was called to cover when it happened. The security profession is one of the more known professions where someone has to be on duty 24 hours a day. The most I've worked in a three week span was 219 hours. 86 hours ( 1st week ) 77 hours ( 2nd week ) and 56 hours ( final week ). 56 hours was my regular assignment, and the other hours were worked over other various security sites during that particular week. Department Stores, Parking Lots, and Condos. Your statement that a person could never be given as much as 72 hours is false, case in point I just made.
You're really dense, xttwo. If you were already working a lot of hours already (88, 77), why ask for 72? You complained enough times about having too many hours, asking for 72 was stupid. What did you expect the boss to say to that request? If you would have been smart, you would have documented what you had done on paper. Shown that you were the one training new guards and whatever else you were doing during that time frame. You then present that information to your boss as proof and reasoning why you deserve a raise. Then you ask for a raise. That's how raises are acquired. Asking for hours doesn't cut it. Here's a post from a lawyer specializing in labor law on a reputable workforce-related website (not Monster) in regard to an employee requesting 72 hours of work per week 7 days a week: The following could preclude it: He would have been better off asking for an hourly raise by documenting his accomplishments and presenting them to his boss. Employers are usually open to that approach. And BTW, if you were getting all these hours week after week, that was a good amount of overtime pay. Why did you need to abuse credit cards and get way into debt just because you couldn't control yourself and felt you were entitled to spend more money than you were getting already?
If I complained about anything it was the pay. Pay usually depends on the client who hires the company for security officers. The nursing home where I worked the bulk of the latter side of 5 years the pay went from 5.50 ( one day training wage ) to it's highest point when I quit - 7.75 hr. The first year I worked, the rate was always $8, but again, the hours were plentiful, 56, 77, that one time 86, 60 or 40 +/- 10 in overtime. As far as trainee documentation is concerned there was always a pink slip ( not the kind your thinking of ) that states what I did as a trainer, what I taught them, and the both of us ( trainer/trainee ) have to sign and date. So the questions that need to be asked are why weren't they willing to give me a raise either much sooner than they did ( last two years before I quit ), or why wasn't my pay much higher after six years than it was? As I said, I can understand they have a hard enough time keeping people around past the initial shock of working a security shift, depending on if things happen or not, it's a job that requires effort : alertness and a willingness to do what is necessary when the time calls for it. - But given the fact that I suspect I'm one of a select few who outlasted most of their regular employee base that routinely quits, the best way to keep me around is incremental financial incentives. You keep saying I should take the initiative. They are the ones that have the task of making sure I don't quit, remember? I can quit anytime I please. They being a business that has to continually run don't have the luxury of going without employees. So when I made the suggestion yesterday, employers that worry about retaining good/valued employees, they should take the initiative, particularly when it's this type of work - security.
I told the story before, back during the first ( and what turned out to be the only ) year I was raking in all the money I needed and then some - $550/$600 week. I had five credit cards I easily could pay off with no worries. When that assignment was cut out from under me, I was assigned to another security location that as I say paid almost next to nothing. Resentment, frustration, and a little sourness sets in where I see a lot of avenues in my life closing shut, not to mention various wants, desires and dreams will never be realized, trust me, it's not all that far a leap for someone to go from that to wreckless. Why do people like that employer who murdered his employees, do such things? Desperation, anxiety, etc. Get the picture?
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