I have had a few moments over the past few days to reflect on the golden cage that is my current employment situation.
The first came when I had to get a confirmation of salary for some banking purposes. I almost fell out of my chair when I opened the letter to see that since I started 3.5 years ago, I'm now up 25% in pay from what I made when I started. 25%. That also means I'm making more than double what I made at my previous employer whom I left to work here. That's...um...sick. And not sic as in cool, yo yo homey g. But sick - as in disgusting. And I have all of that to thank to my union who keeps negotiating ridiculous salary increases. On the down side, I actually end up paying them a fairly good little piece o' dough to keep me in those increases.
But do you know what this means? It means that pretty much the only place I can go to get comparable pay is to the government. And we all know how easy it is to get in there. And it'd have to be a 04 or 05 position. So really, I can't really afford to quit my job and go work somewhere else because of the pay cut I'd be taking. Now, if I had a sugar daddy to help me pay my bills so I could have the freedom to move, okay. But right now, on my own, I'm a little bit screwed.
The other came today when I went to buy fully licensed software for my new laptop. I knew that there were institutional rates for these things but I didn't know what the rebate was. So, I got Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and Adobe Acrobat Professional 9. Together, they retail for just over $1000 before taxes ($1040 at Best Buy, $1050 at Staples).
What did I pay? $50. $10 for Office and $40 for Acrobat. The woman who sold it to me did the whole breathing in between teeth thing and said 'yes, but....that's $40'. I didn't want to tell her...I'd even be willing to pay $50! Sheesh!
And yet there are still complainers at work...egads.
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