At my last company, one day someone in accounting approached me at lunch and quietly told me I need to ask for a raise because I was way underpaid.
They gave me a number to shoot for. It was about twice than what I had been making at the time.
So I went online, did some research, found some figures backing up my claim, put it all together and went to my boss.
I got what I asked for.
If it hadn’t been for that person in accounting telling me I was way underpaid, I’d have never known. I went from barely scraping by to being able to have a savings account and getting all my debts paid thanks to them.
You should at least check sites like salary.com to start the process of seeing what you should be making.
Because this is crucially important
Except for the fact that 90% of the time you are under contract not to talk about your salary otherwise the company can sue you. Every job I’ve had I’ve had to sign that I won’t discuss my pay with other employees otherwise my employment is terminated and the company will take legal action.
My family is from Nigeria, and my full name is
Uzoamaka, which means “The road is good.” Quick lesson: My tribe is
Igbo, and you name your kid something that tells your history and
hopefully predicts your future. So anyway, in grade school, because my
last name started with an A, I was the first in roll call, and nobody
ever knew how to pronounce it. So I went home and asked my mother if I
could be called Zoe. I remember she was cooking, and in her Nigerian
accent she said, “Why?” I said, “Nobody can pronounce it.” Without
missing a beat, she said, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and
Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.”
I’ve worked with many exchange programs on campuses, and they still “encourage” Chinese students to choose English names for their stay in the US. I’ve adopted a rule for myself, I won’t address them with their English name until they’ve told me to stop trying their real name on at least three different occasions. My family is largely immigrant, and while we’ve never had this problem, I don’t think anyone should have to change who they are when them find a new home, even a temporary one. So far, only two exchange student actually wanted to keep their English name, and one of them, Alice, had had Alice for a nickname since she was little.
Don’t know if it’s okay to add this here, but I used to work with a Chinese woman who had changed her name to Angelina for the sake of ease. When she first told me that was what she’d had to do, I asked her for her real name and if she minded me calling her that. She looked so frikkin happy, and it only took about two minutes for me to say it right. It’s not that people can’t pronounce these names, it’s that they won’t. It’s lazy and it’s rude.
It’s also RACIST.
Say ‘racist’.
They pronounce Tchaikovsky and Schwarzenegger just fine.
QueerGalaxies 