Anyone ever reject a pay rise?
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mea05key (
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July 31st, 2009
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I did, just this year. Only to find they were not giving out any raises anyway.
There was actually a really interesting article about this type of thing in Japan.
Apparently, the young Japanese workers saw how much time and effort their bosses had to put into their jobs and chose rather to stay in their current positions that gave them more free time.
It would have brought me to a tax disadvantage this year.
Next year all will be good to go.
My Hubby did, sort of. When asked by his boss if he wanted to enter the management training program, with 10 – 20 hours more work every week, he declined, even though it would have been a pay raise. He just didn’t want to devote that much time to the company.
It turned out to be a good thing, in the long run. When a new company bought them out, the new owners let the middle management people go, but Hubby stayed.
I once asked for more vacation time in lieu of a pay raise. I got both. :) Yeah for me!
@mea05key thanks. I’m always in favor of more time out of the office and more time exploring the world!
I took a demotion with a pay cut a few years back. The job I was in was very precarious and they were laying off. I had the least senority so when the director of the agency offered me a different position at less pay, it was better than no job at all. Since that time, my new job was reclassed and I now make more than I would have if I had stayed in the old position.
Not as such, but when I resigned I was offered more money to stay and I turned it down.
I resigned from a manager position believing I would miss an increase and despite threats of a pay decrease from my then boss, an assistant director who fucked up bad and blamed me. What a fool….there were witnesses who corroborated my defense and all was documented in my folder. My new boss and HR knew what happened and not only preserved my salary but still provided an increase. I was soon reassigned to another manager position not reporting to that ass (the organization revised their org chart which was pushed through all the way to the president by the good folks at HR). I was then offered a higher level position in a different organization that was at least equal to that of my nemesis, who “retired” shortly after the fiasco. Had I remained in my original organization and had he not “retired” there is little doubt the bastard would have reported to me (which was not an unusual occurrence for me…on a couple of department transfers, I leap-frogged over the people to whom I initially reported and, when I left the company, more than one VP remarked that they fully expected to be reporting to me within a short period of time).
Well not exactly, but when negotiating my salary I insisted to get less, because I knew they couldn’t afford me and would go bust eventually, whereas I wanted to just help them out (even for free). But it’s only a once-a-week gig, so it’s not as if my life depended on it.
No I didn’t. But I also never asked for one. All raises were offered to me and I accepted. There are dangers with frequent huge raises:
1) Higher expectations which can be a threat to a healthy work/life balance
2) Your risk of getting fired increases because you are more expensive to your company
I’ll stick with moderate raises. And none are needed during recessions like this one.
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