I was a private chef making 100k a year cooking for a wonderful family in NYC. My roommate from culinary school asked me to come out to California to see his new project – a brewery/restaurant he was starting from scratch in wine country in Sonoma.
I spent a week with him talking about the project and checking out the area. We made great plans about menus, style of food etc. Then a week later, I get a call with the job offer – 35k a year plus 5 percent of profits.
I was surprised and a little upset at how low it was. The cost of living in that area of California is very high, there’s no way I could live off such a small salary.
The 5 percent profit share I believe essentially to be a ruse. They were planning on expanding the business if it did well so would be reinvesting the profits back into the business so there wouldn’t really be any or much profits.
Even if they did turn a million dollar profit, I’d still only make an additional 50k which with my salary would still be less then the 100k I was already making at my current job.
I turned down the job which upset my old roommate but feel like a dodged a bullet as they never did that well and I would have been working incredibly hard for very little money.
Back in the mid 90’s I got a job at a franchise bagel shop, Manhattan Bagel. I love to work and it was a fast paced job where my ADHD could thrive. I was also an early bird, so I soon graduated to making the bagels and muffins in the wee hours of the morning, before the shop opened.
I was 19 and most of my coworkers were also young, but a year or two older than me, and had a real disdain for authority. To this day, I am a doer, not a delegator, and I also suffer from rejection sensitivity disorder, a downside ofy ADHD, so managing has never appealed to me.
The owner of the store approached me at the end of a shift one day and asked me to be the assistant manager. He made it out like he was doing me this grand favor! I said I would have to think about it, and what would the pay increase be.
I was making minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. He said there was no pay raise, but it would look great on my resume. I left that day, and never came back. I was beyond insulted. I also worked two other part time jobs so I just increased my hours at those other places. How stupid did he think I was?!
I was currently working a job that paid $67,000, but was looking for a new job that was a step up, both a higher level role and higher pay.
During my first interview for a role, when asked, I told them I was interviewing for jobs in the range of $80,000-$100,000 (and many of my other interviews were for that much). The interviewer didn’t comment on that, and I was offered another interview.
I had three more interviews and salary was not brought up again during any of them. When an offer was made after the fourth interview, it came in at only $65,000. I told the recruiter on the phone that I was currently making more than that and asked if there was any wiggle room in the salary.
She told me, essentially, that there was no wiggle room for ME, specifically, based on my skills and experience, but she would ask the CEO if they could offer more.
She asked what the lowest amount I would consider was and I told her I would not consider any offers below $75,000. She called back less than 30 minutes later telling me they could offer me $75,000. I still declined the job because I got a better offer the next day.
I was offended by the offer since it was
1. Less than what I was currently making
2. Considerably less than what I had stated the range I was looking at was
3. Her statement that there was specifically no wiggle room for me based on my skills
4. They clearly did have wiggle room in the salary and thought they could low-ball me
I was happy at my job, but one day a head hunter called me up, and asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for a job that was a step up, at a rival company.
I hummed and hawed, and thought why not see what I am worth, at the worst I could ask my boss for a raise.
I went to the interview, they were impressed and offered me a job, they wanted to know my current salary, I told them that the salary was only a small part of my pay, as I had a performance bonus that was substantially more than my salary.
So I wanted to know what their bonus system was. It was woefully low, compared to my current job, I would get a bonus that was maybe 20 percent of my salary, compared to the 200 percent of the salary I was getting.
To make up for it, they offered me a 20 percent higher salary.
I wont give real numbers, but here is how it would work out.
I was currently getting $1000 in salary, and $2000 in bonus per month, for a total of $3000.
They thought salary was the key, and offered me $1200 in salary and $240 a month in bonus for a total of $1440
Less than half of what I was making, doing a job with less responsibility.
I told them that I wasn’t interested, and they offered to increase it to 30 percent increase in salary. Which would have been just over half of what I was making.
They just kept coming back to salary, and never seemed to grasp how substantial my bonus was.
That was a slap in the face offer.
I of course turned them down.
They went bankrupt 18 months later.
I had just been made redundant on the Friday before the Monday I was supposed to be moving out. It was all very sudden and unexpected, but I could not stay where I was due to the circumstances there.
I was applying for around 20–50 jobs a week in both the field I had qualifications in and other fields that I had previously had experience in. I wasn’t picky – I just needed enough to stay afloat while I lived by myself.
My Dad had contacted an old friend of his who owned a small firm and set up an interview. I was uncomfortable the entire time – the man who owned the firm and who also interviewed me was a lecherous old creep who, I had only noticed after I had left, only hired pretty young women; there was not another man in sight. He had constantly made comments about my face, body, and about the other young women there. He tried to pass it off as “charm”, but it was disgusting nonetheless.
A week later, he called and offered me well below the current minimum wage in my country for a full-time position that I not only had qualifications in, but also had experience in, and I was more than above a junior level at this point.
I called my Dad and told him I rejected the offer and he lost it and just told me to take the job because it was money coming in regardless. I told him that he offered below the current minimum wage, which is illegal, and that the weekly pay would only cover rent and half of my car payment and that there would be nothing left for food, car insurance, bills, or petrol.
I did end up finding a job a few weeks later that paid around $30k more annually than the job I had been made redundant from. I’ve since moved on from that job, and found another with better pay and even better working conditions.
