“We work to get paid” is an idea that you’ve probably read a great deal scribbled on the walls of this site, and it’s a sentiment that echoes around the internet and in workplace spaces. The idea being that no matter how your employer tries to sugarcoat your lackluster compensation with pizza parties and declarations of being “family” and the like. Essentially, trying to cover the office with a metaphorical fine dusting of glitter when the reality is that the workplace environment they’re creating is quite dull and dismal.
At the end of the day, all that really matters is where the rubber of payment meets the road of the time and the labor you have provided them.
But while payment (aka the money you see in your bank account every month or fortnight) is the bread and butter of workplace compensation, it’s not the whole picture. There are finer details in the shading and color of what the working conditions are. Whether or not you feel respected and empowered, what your working hours are, and if your time is valued, what flexibility you’re provided, and whether or not you’re going to be surviving in a pressure cooker of stress, or if things are going to be pretty even-paced. And those are just a few of the things that you might want to consider when taking a new job or a promotion.
As I’ve written about recently, sometimes it’s just not worth climbing up the ladder when you’re going to get just a little bit more pay, but work far worse (or more) hours and deal with an increased level of stress on top of that. This can be even harder to justify being worthwhile when you’re salaried and might be expected to work extra hidden hours without additional compensation.
For example, in this account that a workplace supervisor recently shared online, they shared how their own boss was insisting that they work an extra two hours of unpaid time every day. Their boss argued that it was just a requirement that went along with their station and that it was their duty to do so.
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