Perhaps the best strikes out of the blue, perhaps.
December
2016
After a few
drinks on a Christmas party my boss suggested we needed to have a longer chat.
I had awaited this conversation for weeks and had hoped he would appreciate my
hard work and signal an imminent promotion and pay rise. Over the next days I
kept insisting he did not go back on his promise and so we eventually landed in
a conference room. My boss simply wanted to ask me how I felt, overburdened
with work. His reason to have a chat with seemed so absurdly silly that I straightforwardly
asked about my prospects of promotion. He honestly reassured they were none…
February
2017
Annual
appraisal. During an hour-long meeting to talk over my performance over the
previous year I learnt whatever I had done superbly, I had just lived up to my
superiors’ expectations, but whatever mistake I had made (the more you do, they
more likely you are to make an error, statistically) I had been destined to be
rebuked over. Then I took out a sheet of internal memo on promotion criteria to
prove I had met all requirements set out in the document. My boss rebuffed
this, claiming those guidelines were just a bare minimum and meeting all
targets did not automatically qualify me for a position upgrade, but was just a
condition precedent to it. At the end I was told the reason why I could not be
promoted was that I displayed “emotional immaturity”. I immediately demanded
examples of behaviours proving my lack of maturity. Needless to say the
assertion of my emotional immaturity had no backing. That appraisal was held on
Friday. The weekend thereafter in a spurt of anger I sent out CVs to
competitors of the New Factory.
March 2017
I attended
two interviews with other financial institutions. Even if in terms of
competencies I was eligible, with hindsight I found out my pay rise expectations
had priced me out of any considerations. In terms of salary growth, banking
sector bucks the trends visible on the labour market. Had I even gotten a
higher position, I would have had to accept a similar or lower base salary, not
to mention I would have given up on a generous bonus.
April 2017
Found a job
opening for a senior position in a similar area at the New Factory. I knocked
on some doors to senior managers’ offices and shed some tears over my hapless
situation. They were meant to play the cards right.
May 2017
I attended
a serious of informal meetings with my would-be superiors (would-be boss and
his boss) and once they decided they would take me on, I officially applied for
the position. For the sake of transparency, a full-blown recruitment procedure
needed to be run before they would select me.
July 2017
Meeting
with candidates for my position dragged on for weeks and eventually nobody,
including me, was offered that position just because the vacancy was either
cancelled or put on hold. My hopes were dashed, actually I was not officially
turned away. In the HR system my application was not even rejected, I only
received a message the process had been completed. Actually since in the
meantime my priorities had changed, the loss was not that painful.
September
2017
Shortly before
my holidays gossips about substantial reshuffles in the organisational
structure were put about. With little hopes to win, I began to wonder how to take
advantage of the changes.
11 October
2017
My would-be
boss dropped me an e-mail with an urgent request to meet up and asked whether I
was interested in that job any longer. I came over, showed some reserved
interest and declared I would need to think it over seriously, especially since
some time had passed.
12 October
2017
I met a
boss of my would-be boss to haggle over my base salary. The basic they offered
was some 15% higher than my current one, yet I feared with much lower bonus
multiplier, my all-in after-tax remuneration would go down by some 10% – quite astonishing
side effect of a promotion, though you must remember bonus multipliers may
change any time and the only bonuses you could be certain of are those ones
already transferred into your bank account.
13 October
2017
Pay
bargaining turned out to be successful. I got more that they wanted to offer me
two days earlier, yet still less than what I held out for while applying. I
accepted the base salary, bearing in mind how much some of my ex-workmates who
had changed jobs recently earn. We nailed down the deal, yet before I sign the
annex to my job contract, my promotion and pay rise remain in the realm of
gentlemen’s agreements and the New Factory still stands a chance to
double-cross me (it can boast of track record of mistreating its employees).
The unexpected
goings-on from recent days prove one timeless regularity – the less you care,
the better things shape up. Same happened to me a few months ago when after
several spectacular mistakes in the love life, I decided to give up on looking
for girlfriend. Less than a month later I dated somebody and future still looks
bright.
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