The Sting of a Pay Cut

In late July 2014, I received the best performance review in my career. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I deserved it. I had hired nearly 200 external candidates and filled at least a third as many internal positions, secured over $150 thousand dollars in grants to offset some of the training costs tied to filling so many positions (which was close to 3X my base salary, even with the whopping 4% increase I received the year prior), and kept all the other plates spinning that I was responsible for. My boss painted a wonderful picture of the promotion he was awarding me and detailed the pay increase that would accompany it, an increase he said I had more than earned. Looking back, I probably should have asked for specifics.

I thanked him for the specific feedback and immediately went back to it. My short days at that point ran from 6a to 6:30p, and those were few and far between. It wasn’t at all uncommon for me to arrive by 5:30a and leave after 7:30p, often causing Cindy to call to see if I was okay. I rushed back to my desk after that review because every minute I was away from it felt like I was falling 10 minutes farther behind.

Since I was paid on the 15th and 30th of each month at that point, and since I neglected to get details as to what my pay adjustment would look like, I didn’t give it another thought until I checked my statement on August 15 - nearly 3 weeks after receiving the glowing remarks about my performance and hearing about the amazing promotion I had earned. The one thing I confirmed in the review was that the significant amount of hours I had been working would be taken into consideration when the salary adjustment was made; my boss assured me that I’d be taken care of. When I opened the statement, I immediately noticed that it was around $500 less than each previous period in the months leading up to that point. My boss had just arrived, he often stayed until well after 5p but rarely got in before 8a, so I caught him before he could shut his door and showed him the mistake. He took a quick look and told me that it was exactly what it was supposed to be; an increase on my base pay, the lowest possible base in the salaried pay bands. That said, it was now a salaried-exempt position with a set amount regardless of hours.

While I didn’t press for specifics during the review, I did ensure he had taken all the hours into consideration when he made the adjustment. He clearly had, but it wasn’t me he was looking out for when he did it. That promotion resulted in nearly a twenty-five percent cut in total compensation. I asked if that was indeed his MBA hanging in an eloquent frame on the wall behind him. He confirmed that it was and I was quick to suggest that he asked that institution for a refund because he clearly didn’t know anything about simple arithmetic. Like my comment over a year prior about his name not being in the Book where I read the part about “As you sow so shall you reap,” he saw no humor - and I gave ZERO shits. I pointed to the chair at my desk just across the hall and told him that someone else would need to fill it within the next six months.

I hadn’t been working toward the purpose that fulfilled me since moving into that role but I had been too busy to give it much thought. Although it was not at all what I expected, it was the kick in the pants I needed to realize that it was time to consider a change. It was a bit of a financial hit, but this adversity required more emotional self-control to navigate effectively. I had been in the organization since I was 19 years old. I had given 60-70 hours per week to this latest role for two solid years. Repeated undervaluation tests self-control and forces us to decide whether to stay with hopes of rebuilding or look elsewhere - revealing seeds of definiteness of decision.

I kept my nose to the grind during the months that followed, and we’ll walk through that next. Before that, though, consider a past pay cut or compensation disappointment you’ve experienced. What blind spot in how you valued your own contribution did it expose? My blind spot was trusting that my boss had anything other than his own best interests in mind. I hadn’t seen him go to bat for anyone else, but I worked for him directly so I thought it would be different. It wasn’t…