sharing your income

yay or nay?

“I’d like to make was May-Britt is making”, a colleague once asked my boss. I had never told her the amount of my monthly paycheck but I imagine she thought it was higher than hers so she took the gamble.

Even thought I found the situation somewhat uncomfortable (she told me what she had done) I started to understand where she was coming from. I was taught that talking about your income was not a polite thing to do. My mother even pulled the bible off the bookshelf telling me the story about those workers in the vineyard (I think it was a vineyard) who earned as much in half a day as the poor who stood there harvesting the grapes in the hot sun all day. When they went to complain they got the following answer: “ But you agreed to these terms, right? So stop moaning.”

So, I’d never thought I would run a biblical story at Amayzine, but that set aside, talking about your salary can determine the flexibility (and stretch) of the company. If you know that your colleague makes a thousand euros more than you and you’re working for the same company, that’s promising. Okay he might be older, more experienced but you can go in and ask for a 300 euro raise at your next evaluation. Here are some more tips to raise that amount on your monthly paycheck.

But you agreed to these terms, right?

So stop moaning!

Besides men still make more than most women. Go ahead say it out loud; total disgrace! Because we are, of course, just as good and our Jimmy Choo’s are a little more expensive that their Van Bommels. In Norway (why are Scandinavians always so incredibly correct?) they have released all salary documentation and now have the smallest gap between male and female salaries.

The moral behind this Monday morning story; don’t speak to each other in exact amounts, it will only cause uneasiness. But think about which colleague makes a lot more than you do and at the next meeting tell your boss that’s what you want. Let’s hope your boss is a she.

Make me proud and yourself rich.