Sorry, You Matter Too Much to Make a Living Wage
One year, my boss gave me a chocolate bar for a raise.
It came with a Christmas card. The card made a joke about how sweet I was. He appreciated all the extra, unpaid work I'd done. I was invaluable. That was my third year without a raise, despite "exceptional" performance on my reviews. A lawyer or a banker would throw a rage fit.
In the teaching world, that's standard.
One of my friends used to work as a zookeeper. She asked for a raise three times. Finally, she got another job.
"Oh my god," her boss said. "All the animals are going to die. We're already understaffed. How could you do this to us?"
Another one of my friends managed to get a promotion with a considerable pay bump. She met with her department chair and her dean to go over the new responsibilities. At one point, the dean referenced the paperwork to process her raise. Her chair immediately responded, "You don't have to worry about that. She's not doing this for the money."
Teachers. Nurses. Paramedics. Daycare workers.…