last week at our staff meeting, our boss announced that we would be getting our annual raise of 3%. few people reacted. some scoffed. i cheered. later a few of my colleagues asked why would i cheer for a 3% raise? it amounts to, like, $5 per paycheck. big deal.
well, first of all, we get paid 26 times a year. that adds up to $130 a year - nothing to sniff at! also, we're getting a raise. i don't care if it's 1%. that means that our company is doing well enough that they can spare the money to pay its employees more, across the board. in this economy, and especially in the health care field, that's kind of a big deal. my husband hasn't gotten a raise in 5 years. in fact, his company issued 7.5% pay cuts 4 years ago, so he is now making what he made 10 years ago!
last summer when obama announced that federal workers wouldn't get pay raises that year, a few friends of mine who work for the government took to facebook to voice their displeasure. bitching and moaning that they didn't get their raise for the year. whining about it not being fair. one of them happened to be matt's best man. i responded to his complaining by telling him to talk to matt about how he hasn't gotten a raise in 4 years, and see if he has any thoughts about it. that shut him up.
so that's why i cheer for our raise, even though it's fairly minimal. because i'm getting one. and hundreds of thousands of people aren't. hundreds of thousands of people don't even have a pay that can be raised.
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