There have always been thousands of workers who could make a strong case that they’re underpaid, but we can see that the anger and resentment this situation causes has come to a cultural boiling point over the past year.
And considering what tends to happen when valuable employees ask for a raise , it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that one of the world’s leading CEOs would consider even the prospect of asking for one “cringeworthy.”
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But what some business owners and managers fail to realize is that when they make their employees feel like it’s pointless to ask for a raise, it can end up hurting their company in major ways after enough of their workers decide they’ve had enough.
And after the consequences of doing this to one project manager presented themselves, it’s hard to imagine his former bosses feeling much besides regret nowadays.
After first getting his feet wet in the construction industry six years ago, the man we’re about to hear from became a project manager at a general contractor.
As he said in a Reddit post , “I was raised believing if you work hard and apply yourself you will be successful.”
So after he got his first construction job, he studied everything he could about the industry and took this work home with him for about two years. This got him promoted to foreman, which then led to further promotions until he became his company’s only project manager.
During this time, he worked closely with the directors of a 12 building, 120 unit-condo complex and impressed them with his professionalism, work ethic, and efficiency because he could always deliver on time and under budget.
And since those directors had gone through five different contractors before he showed up, they were confident they finally found someone who could handle a contract worth $3 million.
Since that was obviously a big win for the man’s company, he figured it put him in a good position to ask the contractor’s owners for the raise they had promised him a year prior.
But as he put it, “They told me ‘the experience you’re gaining is far more valuable'” and decided they would keep him at $40,000 a year with no benefits.
To add insult to injury, they would also deny him a Christmas bonus right after bragging about how much his project made them during a company meeting.
Yet as awful as this was for the project manager, he couldn’t help but agree that the experience he gained over the past six years was indeed valuable.
So much so that when he subsequently shopped his resumé around, he found that a another contractor was willing to hire him for double his salary plus all the benefits and paid time off he couldn’t get at his former company.
He said his bosses’ jaws dropped after he resigned, but he found the condo directors’ panicked reactions even more satisfying as they quickly demanded a meeting with the contractor’s owners.
As the employee soon learned, they weren’t sure whether they could move forward on the project without him, which might mean the end of the $3 million contract.
In the project manager’s words, “I’m not gonna lie, it feels good to hurt their pockets when I gave them everything I had for 6 years and only asked for the median project manager salary.”
h/t: Reddit | tcrambo
