I saw a proposal to give us all raises — and I’m upset

A reader writes:

I saw something at my very small office that I shouldn’t have: When I went to pick up some papers from the printer, I saw a document our executive director had printed off. When an employee grabs something off the printer, it’s not uncommon for us to pick up whatever else is there and drop it off with the right person, so I didn’t think twice about glancing at it to find out where it should go.

It appeared to be a proposal for our board. One of the bullet points I saw was that in our next budget, there’s a proposed 2% raise for all employees. As soon as I realized what the printed papers were, I simply put them back where I found them and moved on like I hadn’t seen anything. Not my business, and I felt bad even seeing what I had (but I hadn’t heard the printer in a while, so they’d been sitting there for at least half an hour.)

But I can’t stop thinking about this. We’re a small office with just a few full-time staff, including one employee who only started within the last two months. For comparison, I’ve been here a few years and have about a decade more professional experience.

I know budgets are tight for nonprofits, and I don’t expect to make boocoodles of money here, but I’ve put in a lot of work for this organization. When we were short-staffed for a few months, I was essentially doing 100% of my job and 80% of another person’s, which our boss (the ED) acknowledged. I get 5/5 on my annual reviews, exceeding expectations in everything. Our boss acts like and has told me she adores me and is so glad she hired me.

Two percent doesn’t even equate to a cost-of-living raise, and that’s annoying, but I mostly just can’t get over the fact that someone who just joined us and agreed to their salary is getting the same raise I am without having done anything to merit it. She’s in the same role but has no supervisory duties while I do, and I’m still training her on a lot of things. I very much respect this coworker and her work, but in two months, it would be hard to make that kind of impact, right? I’d even accept it as her getting a weak cost-of-living raise, but not much has changed cost-of-living-wise in two months.

Am I in the wrong here? Is there an angle I’m missing? (I will note that I’m autistic, so sometimes I miss things that might seem obvious to others, so commenters, please don’t blast me into oblivion.)

These sound like across-the-board cost-of-living raises, not merit raises (based on the fact that the exact same percentage is being applied to everyone without any variation). That means that the organization would be raising its salaries for individual roles, rather than the specific people in there. Your executive director is saying, essentially, “When we last approved salary bands for these roles, it was based on a now-outdated set of assumptions about the cost of living and market rates.”

That doesn’t work perfectly when you have someone who agreed to their current salary just two months ago, but it’s a normal way to handle organization-wide cost-of-living increases, and the annual budget is probably the only time the executive director can do it.

And yes, the cost-of-living hasn’t changed much in two months, but it’s probably changed more significantly since the last time these salary bands for the roles — not the people — were set.

Your issue is that you’re seeing it all through a merit lens, but that’s a totally different lens than the one being used.

However, you can and should sidestep this entirely and ask for a merit raise based on your work and contributions. Here’s info on how to do it.

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