Bump

Not the kind you torment other board-dwellers with by making horrible topics (usually started by me) jump to the head of the message board, but rather a salary bump.

In January of 07 we absorbed a crew of guys from the main plant that shut down at the end of 06.  Know that saying, "You're not in Kansas anymore"?  Well it applied to these guys, big time.  But the odd thing is, it actually helped those of us who had been at this facility all along.  For starters, they made hella more money than us.  Then they started asking about these bonus plans, salary plans, etc.  I remember some of the guys came up to me and said "Tom, how do they handle <plan X> here?".  I just returned a blank stare and asked wtf <plan X> was...never heard of it.  So we find out the company has "forgotten" (their term) to institute these policies at our facility.  Ha.

So little by little these policies started getting brought to us, which in many cases resulted in extra bonus cash.  I mean seriously, how do you forget to institute this in an entire facility?  Anyway...

As I mentioned, these guys make a lot more money than us.  And I'm ok with that, because a lot of these guys have 20+ years with the company...they should make more than someone like me, who's been there a year and a half.  But nonetheless, this caused HR to review our payrates and whaddyaknow, we were below the local standard.  So a few months back I got a small bump, about 55 cents an hour.  Not great but its something.

So as those of you familiar with my whining know, these past several months I've been performing my job far beyond its description and running one of the most (if not the most) vital departments in the building by myself, no other fulltime associates, with just two temps.  Let me tell you something...I have these kids trained to the teeth.  And make no mistake, if they weren't sharp, hard-working and dedicated people it wouldn't matter.  But they are, so they absorb everything I show and tell them and apply it.  Our department rocks.

So we have a meeting (there I go with the "so" again) last week with the manager, just the local people...in other words, not the guys who came from the plant.  He told us that some of our job descriptions were re-worded and we were getting another bump to bring us more inline, salary wise.  He said for the most part it was 3% across the board, the highest was a 7.5% raise.  If we were interested we could see him after the meeting to find out what we got. 

So of course we all lined up, and when I went in...wowza, I was the guy with the 7.5% bump.  And might I add, our raises come up in March and this does NOT count as a raise...its a salary adjustment.  Very nice indeed, let me assure you that it was far better than the 55 cents.  I'm still not ready to move on up to the east side, but that will help.

So my immediate boss called (he took half a day to go get a vasectomy...the jokes we made could be a blog on its own) to ask me about something, and I mentioned the raise and the fact that I knew I got that because he re-wrote my job description...so thanks.  A lot.

I should mention here that a couple weeks ago I was told I was getting promoted.  Thats like the 5th time (at least) I've been told this, so I was like "oh, ok" and whatever.  Now when I was talking to my boss on the phone, he said no problem...I deserved it...and he had something cooking for me come review time that he was pretty sure I would be happy with.  Could it actually...be?  Could that mythical promotion be looming on the horizon, perhaps a scant 6 weeks away?  Stay tuned.

Meantime I still haven't heard if I won that employee of the quarter award.  Thats got a $200 Best Buy card attached to it (plus looks good on the resume), and the quarter ended in December.  Last I heard I was at the top of the list, but no winners have been announced.

Thats it for now.  I know this is pretty long and Mike James will get a headache, so I'll save some other stuff for the next blog.  :)