Once again, the calendar has rolled around to the midway point in the year and I have gotten information about how my next year of financial life is going to shift. That’s right, it’s raise time. I got a decent raise this year. Objectively not stellar, considering my experience and the work I do and so on, but my employer is not known for paying well and I got pretty much the maximum possible raise I could get without getting promoted as well, which is rather uncommon for someone in the upper half of the pay bracket for my current position. My boss seemed pretty surprised by the numbers, but he might have been goofing around. I literally have no idea if any of the things he said were jokes or genuine. I actively interpreted them as jokes in the moment, because my boss is the kind of guy who will let anything slide as long as he’s got you laughing, but I genuinely can’t tell if they were if maybe he’s a lot less involved in how people get raises than I’ve been lead to believe these past nine years.

I’ve had a collection of weird interactions with my boss in the last year or two. Last year’s comments about my work accountability that he refused to say what he wanted from me and that I subsequently solved simply by doing less work but in a more visible manner. Supposed comments from other coworkers about how often I was working from home during a single month that he could have addressed but didn’t, instead telling me to figure it out. Repeated conversastions about how I need to help my coworkers more despite me telling him every time that I do ask my coworkers if they need help frequently and they pretty much always tell me no, which always ends with him saying he’ll have to think about that. A comment about my recent “lack of consistency” despite me being incredibly consistent for months with the testing I’ve been doing, which anyone who knows me would have beenb dumbfounded by. And now this weird raise interaction where I couldn’t tell if he knew I was getting the raise I did or if it surprised him, and then when I figured out the dollar amount if he was actually shocked by how little it wound up being or trying to continuin his joking comments from early.

I’m definitely the most upset about the “inconsistency” thing. I refuted every point he made and countered every comment he had with information that proved my consistency and that I’d been doing what I could to get help with my testing so more of it could happen, but it felt like it was still unresolved by the end of the meeting. I mean, I even reminded him that the reason more testing hadn’t been done on the latest equipment when he gave me the deadline I had to work super hard to meet was because I’d literally only had the test equipment operational for just over a single day. And that I’d done the number of tests on it that I’d normally do in a single day of testing before I was forced to figure out how to increase the frequency. All of which he had no response to and just moved the conversation elsewhere in what felt like a clear attempt to avoid responding. I mean, I’d done everything I would normally do to continue my testing, just with the new gear on top of the existing stuff, and immediately stepped it up the instant I was given a deadline that I had to move heaven and earth to meet (which also wound up not mattering anyway). I don’t know what else he could expect from me at this point, other than some constant work pace that would quickly burn up what little remains of me at this point, a thing I told him is happening and that I’m trying to prevent by taking more breaks and working less overtime.

Just another reminderof why I’m still hunting for a job after five months of failure and my only response back about any of my applications being the one I sent in for a new job at my current employer where they are required, by policy, to interview all internal employee applicants. Which went about as well as it could have, considering they’d already filled the position by the time they called me to schedule my interview, but that still didn’t turn into anything and might never, no materr how well I got along with my interviewers. Personal connections are great, but I was really hoping for a different job. Which, coincidentally, would have paid more than I’ll make over the next year with my average overtime even after this raise. The literal base pay for the job was enough. It would have been huge considering I’d only need to work forty hours a week instead of my current forty to fifty-one and I probably could have landed more than the base pay if I’d gotten the job. Just… a lot to think about as I reflect on another year passed, a year to come, and my continued discomfort with where I’m at.