contemplating my value
I have long forgotten the precise hourly wage that I get paid at work. Technically, for quite a few years now, I am a salaried employee, but on my earnings statements it still gets broken down to what that means my hourly wage is working forty hours a week—something I have long refused to exceed. If I am unable to get certain things done as quickly as, say, certain vendors would prefer, it's not because I'm just ignoring them and it's not because it's not possible to do it, should I work more than eight hours in a given day. It's because if my work load expands beyond the bounds of a forty-hour work week, I simply regard it as something I have not yet had time for.
I have a feeling this position is largely easy for me to take simply by virtue of my longevity now, having worked this job for nearly 19 years. It's well established what I am willing (or able, as in my refusal to own a car) to do. I wonder if I would feel more obligation to overwork myself if I were a much more recent hire? This company and its internal culture has discernibly changed in the years I have worked here, after all.
In any case, I got paid today. It's only when I look at my earnings statement that I am reminded of what my hourly rate works out to. And I have gotten several raises over the years that were shockingly high, to the point that I have sometimes wondered whether I am overpaid. I'm less likely to wonder that these days, now that I am the longest-running employee using the item maintenance system we use and that makes me the "power user" many people come to for tips and advice about it anymore. I have years-long, established connections and relationships with vendors, distributors, brokers and store staff alike. This stuff is incredibly valuable, particularly in comparison to a new hire, and I get that now in a way I kind of didn't, even ten years ago.
Still, sometimes I wish there were an easy way to make a comparison, between my salary and what the average pay for other people doing basically the same job I do for other grocery and retail chains. I suppose for that comparison to be fair, I would have to find not just a representative sample of others doing basically the same job, but who have worked for their same employers for around the same amount of time as well. I suppose in all likelihood the salary rates would range widely. Other factors like geography and local economy come into play as well. There's a lot of adjustments that would have to happen in order for the averages to be fair for comparison, to the point that I'd likely to be falling into the trap of so much data that it can just be manipulated however I want.
Which is all to say, I suppose, even though I don't particularly think of myself as "overpaid" now, I really have no clue what the "free market value" is of my specific skills and experience. I was talking to Alexia last week about how many people my age and younger change their career paths many times in their lives just as a matter of course, and the kind of staying power I have had at just one job is much more common among people older than I am. Spending time looking for work terrifies me, though. I barely knew what the fuck I was doing when I had to search for a job while unemployed in 2002, and the job market has changed so much since then, I would probably have even less of an idea now.
It's a good thing I still love the company I work for.
Those few surprisingly large raises I got were mostly confined to the late 2000s, and are something I regard now as absolutely a thing of the past, barring a significant promotion of some kind, which is always unlikely since I will never be a department Merchandiser (no thanks!). That all changed when we got our last new CEO. To be fair, I still generally get a cost-of-living increase each year, and every time I look up how my wage increase compares to the local cost of living increase in Seattle. Invariably, my salary increase is just slightly higher. Given how much this job has given me in the past, I remain grateful even for that just being maintained for the foreseeable future.
Anyway. What made me start thinking about all of this? Honestly, it was a task I had to do this morning, dealing with a bunch of data I needed to organize in order to ask him a relatively simple question about what he wants done with pricing—there being a whole lot of variables to the decision. It's a simple question based on complicated data. I do a lot of tedious, kind of mindless data entry and maintenance with my job, but this wasn't that. I couldn't listen to a podcast during this, I would retain none of it. It required the kind of mental focus that made me think . . . it's easier in this case for me to think they're paying me what I'm worth.
Shobhit had his Project Management virtual class last night, during which I watched this week's two episodes of the great HBO series Hacks starring national treasure Jean Smart. For some reason, although it's a half-hour show, they are releasing two episodes each Thursday for five weeks. I think it has great writing and the show is really entertaining.
Shobhit made magi for dinner, a huge pot of it so it yielded eleven leftover lunch containers. I still had a veggie pot pie for lunch today; I'll have more magi for dinner. After his class was done, Shobhit and I watched just one episode of season three of The Expanse on Prime Video, after binging fully five episodes in one shot last weekend. I get the feeling we'll finish out the season this weekend, especially since Shobhit has his first full day off in nearly a month tomorrow. I had really wanted to finally go on that day trip to Whidbey Island, but Shobhit didn't really want to pack his one day off with more exhausting running around, and I can understand that. We're about to go on our trip to Portland in just another couple of weeks anyway.
Beyond that, I sort of keep forgetting I'm about to embark on a three-day weekend. Just me, in my household, though: Shobhit has tomorrow off but will work Sunday and Monday. I don't even have anything in particular planned, aside from movies. I may even see another movie in a theater; I'm thinking Cruella, in spite of its mixed reviews. (I took the same approach to the awful New Order on Wednesday and look where that got me, but, whatever.)
Also: June is Pride Month, so "Pride stuff" will start as soon as Tuesday, I suppose. I have a pretty good backlog of DLU photos from past Pride events so I should really start burning through those next week too. I actually have so much going on in June (Portland; Idaho; Pride) I'm genuinely kind of excited.
[posted 12:34 pm]