Had my “appraisal” recently — big build up, lots of talk about how valued I am… and then they offered me a whole 37p an hour extra. Practically life-changing.
For those of you on minimum wage (or close to it), what’s the tiniest, most laughable “pay rise” you’ve ever been handed? Did it even make a difference, or was it just an extra packet of crisps a week?
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When I worked in the gift shop at a tourist attraction, I got a “promotion” from £3.50 per hour to £3.70 per hour. This was in 2005.
25p – I quit.
In March a friend of mine got thanked for all their hard work and dedication to the business. They were told that they’re irreplaceable and therefore management has decided they will be receiving a pay rise. The pay rise was literally just the legal increase in the minimum wage on April 1st.
Edit: Christ on a bike it looks like this scenario was more common than traffic cones on the M6.
Royal Mail Recently. Someone smarter than me will hopefully explain.
May I introduce you to the nursing pay rise, which is absolutely insulting to the sheer amount of clinical and ethical decisions I make daily.
They sell a Senior role in my old job as something incredible. All you get is more stress, more work and 40p more than standard employees that do the bare minimum.
A plastic company branded pen.
Receive an email on a Friday afternoon telling us that a market compensation comparison has been run and that all of us graduates would be receiving a payrise to align us to market and we would find out the amount on Monday.
Amount was £500 p.a. – we spent more on celebratory beers speculating at the obvious extent of our previously undervalued position than about 6 months of the after-tax uplift. Why bother with the cliffhanger announcement?!
When I worked at McDonald’s in 2023 aged 17 the 16-18 year olds received a 40p rise from £7 to £7.40 whereas everyone else received an 85p rise which I thought was fucking disgusting and should be illegal
I think my lowest one was 2p an hour increase. I worked for a family business and they had to put my wage up to the minimum when I turned 18
In the early 2000s I left my job for a higher paying job (10p per hour increase). After about a month my old job lured me back with a further 10p increase.
Don’t forget, if you don’t get a pay-rise above inflation, you’re taking a pay-cut.
I used to work for Grainger games. I was promoted to assistant manager and my pay rise was £0.50 per hour.
Glad that company went under, they deserved everything they got.
Not a pay rise, but when interviewing for a new job.
I was salaried on £38k for 37 hours per week, and people acted like I should be grateful to receive a job offer for £40k to work 45 hours a week. Same pension contribution, benefits, etc.
I had to sit and explain the maths and how it was effectively a pay reduction.
My last employer before I went freelance called all the staff in for an urgent meeting, where we were told that we were all being enrolled in a pension scheme, where 5% of our wages would be deducted, and the employer would contribute an additional 3%.
A colleague turned to me and loudly asked “what exactly is eight per cent of fuck all, anyway?”
12 pence for night rates at Tesco. 😒
We were supposed to be getting one back in April, but it was pushed to this month. I received my letter about an hour ago. Around £150/yr, or 8p/hr, is the number. Other people got around 5x more, which isn’t great, but better than nothing.
Seriously considering my next move.
I work in early years, was hired as an unqualified EYP, was told to do my qualification asap to get the pay rise. 9 months of working all day and writing essays at nights and I was rewarded with 15p more per hour.
I worked at maccies for a hot minute. And every year their pay reviews happened just before minimum wage went up. They never gave maximum pay rises out so you always got a mediocre 3%. Then the minimum wage went up (and all levels within the company to match) negating the Payrise you just received.
I was made logistics team leader in 2017. Was promised payrise after payrise. Still on minimum wage in 2021. After threatening to leave, I got offered £100 plus 1%. Fuck you Allied.
Got a badge. A free badge. Of the charity logo.
Oh and when minimum wage went up, only the staff on minimum wage had an email about how much they’d be paid. We did not get the same rise…
This year. 3.2%, inflation at 3.5%.
When I pointed out that was a real terms pay cut for the 3rd year running meaning I was poorer now than when I joined the company, I was told “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
I don’t feel that way, it’s just maths!
Safe to say I’m looking for a new job now.
Worked at McDonalds was 20 years old in uk you get paid less if you not 21. Had a meeting for review how I’m doing . There were 3 levels of pay rise i got highest grade don’t remember how much but it was maybe 50p extra for hour. Than few weeks later after birthday got to 21 year old and started to get minimum wage asked were is my 50p they said you already got pay rise to minimum wage. So pretty much I got no pay rise 🤣
I got offered a manager role and it was an 0.87p increase to my kitchen porter role, I stayed as a porter and enjoyed every minute of it
I negotiated a pay rise at a stage through the year. Reasonably small but I was happy. Company then gave a yearly pay rise to all employees at the new financial year. Because I negotiated my pay rise closer to year end, I didn’t get this company increase. It would have been worth more than actual pay rise I’d negotiated, so I negotiated myself out of a pay rise. They knew it and still made it hard for me. Needless to say I moved on and got a nice bump elsewhere.
Back in 2012ish? I was going from crew member to Manager, so much extra responsibility threats of sacking for poor performance etc etc. 20p an hour. Told them stuff it went and got another job for £2 more an hour
I got a pay rise of something like £70 per year. The way the company did salary reviews that year was ridiculous; everyone at my grade earning below £X was bumped up to that amount (which was £2-3k for most) and anyone above it was given a 5% increase; as I was JUST below it amounted to essentially nothing. Argued my case but nothing happened, other than me just being really pissed off.
I got a pay rise for 80 quid on my annual salary. Didn’t even notice it until I got given a letter about it the following month. I was working minimum wage in a warehouse at the time. God that job was the worst
A Freddo an hour!
You could change your life with obesity?
Being told keeping my job was my bonus. Austerity and no wages increases for 3 years even though not technically government service was a fun one. Considering the redundancies, it was a fair point though.
It’s not so much the financial figure that was insulting but how thick they think we all are.
We used to have a quarterly bonus structure. If we hit targets over the quarter we got a bonus equivalent to 10% of our salary for that period.
If we over achieved then we could get up to 20% paid, and if we came under, provided it was within a certain range we’d get between 5-9%. There was times that we missed it and got nothing, too.
In the time I was there, averaging it out we probably got 15% on average a year, and this structure was one of the reasons people took this job over others in the industry because the pay was below market but the bonuses could make it higher.
We went through a merger and were told to bring contracts in line people coming from our company would get 8.5% payrises. What they tried to keep extremely quiet was that the ‘bringing in line’ also removed the bonuses. So while not guaranteed, we averaged a yearly pay loss rather than a rise.
Not me but my partner. She was on £32000 a year, still vastly underpaid for what she actually does, she is a manager and does a lot of extra bits. They offered her a % pay rise to take her up to £34200 ish.
The next day they posted a job advertisement for a basic role, someone she would be managing at £35000.
Safe to say she went back in the next day, showed them
The advert and said she feels taken advantage of and insulted. Said she will apply for the basic role and just do the basic job. Within the hour of this conversation the director had laid a personal visit to her and increased the offer to £36000 plus a few other benefits such as more holidays, birthday off, agreeing to some specialist training she wanted to do. She was happy with it but it left a bit of a sour taste, she definitely isn’t going as above and beyond anymore.
One of my first jobs at a Co-op started at £3.54 per hour. After three months it had changed …to £3.55
Not a payrise but I work for a US company and they made a big song and dance about Employee Appreciation Day. To show us just how much they appreciated us, we each recieved and envelope containing two Cadbury Heroes. To make things worse we were encouraged to post on social media about how thankful we were.
I got a management role in a sales company.
Went from £10k basic plus 10% commission to £11k basic, 10% commission and 1% of my teams commission (they still got 10%, I just warned 1% of their sales).
Wasn’t too bad as we could clear £80k as sales people but running a team saw me fall to about £45k as I spent my life solving problems 😅
Once had a chat about how I didn’t quite qualify for the pay rise, because the targets had been improved the day before and I was now ‘just under’… But despite this I did qualify for this year’s bonus payout. Imagine how surprised I was when my ‘bonus’ turned out to be 2p
I worked at a shop for 2/3 years and found out the new girl was on 50p more an hour than me (I was older, more experienced, had more responsibility) so I spoke to my area manager who said he’d ‘sort something out and get it backdated’ my next wage slip had increased by 20p an hour.
Not a pay raise but after working in an elderly care home during covid, dealing with lockdown and elderly people passing away, each of the staff where given 5 quality street chocolates in a little net bag as a thanks
Not quite the same but I once got an annual bonus of £60
I was once given a ‘substantial’ pay rise working in an office. All talk about how valued i am.
It went from the old minimum wage to the new minimum wage. Management just hoped people weren’t keeping up with that.
When a co-worker of mine found out, she cried at her desk.
I worked in Japan for a while, and one month my company had the biggest sales month ever, so they gave us a bonus of… One 500 yen coin each. Just one, not one per hour or even per week. At the time this was like £2.50? And then got pissy at us for being annoyed at how pitiful it was. ☠️
My old job rounded up to the nearest pound. So 3p an hour. The managers then had the audacity to say we should’ve been grateful because they could have cut our pay. I was crying with laughter during that meeting, and almost had an asthma attack.
NHS;
The GP “recommended uplift” was 6% last year and 4% this year.
Got nothing last year and 1% this year.
People don’t realise that these NHS pay increases are only “recommendations”. Doctors are incredibly devalued here.
Just been though it –
January; told how much of an amazing job I was doing and that I’m inline for a payrise
April – 2% (less than inflation) – mentally checked out of the job
May – got a new job.
Way back when (~’99) i was at McDonald’s I got a 10p pay rise.. sure the options were something like a choice of 0-5-10-15p depending on your performance.
Pretty sure my jump in pay from crew member to floor manager was like 20p 😂
Someone tried to increase my day rate by £10 after I’d been contracting for 3 years and made out it was a really great thing that I deserved given how long I’d stuck with them…left the UK not long after.
Not a pay rise but once got a £1 buy out clause when I was asked to record some CD’s for a childrens musical.
the contract I had to sign was heavier than the coin…
1%. This was after my manager had repeatedly complained that our team had “made too much money” and she was struggling to justify previous price increases to the rest of the business when our internal team’s profits were this high (price increases justified originally by saying the margins were too thin). She complained about it each week for a couple of months whilst simultaneously rejecting requests for job/pay reviews from members of the team.
I switched to “open for work” that afternoon and left the company after 16 years a few weeks later.
When the bosses have so much money that it’s a problem and are still actively against paying a little more to the team making that money, it’s time to go. What a backwards fucking business model that is. Let a profitable team disband and try and make less money so “global” don’t raise an eyebrow.
I giggle every time I see the stock price slip a little more. They deserve it.
1.5% just recently was a bit of a joke tbh
3p
We’ve just completed our yearly pay negotiations and our department went up to minimum wage in April when they were forced to do so, but we get shift allowance so it works out more. But the basic is minimum wage. After the pay negotiations we were still on minimum wage. No increase. When I pointed out we haven’t had one every other department got a pay rise. We were told we already had ours. (The mandatory government one).
In the end they took 2p off another department that agreed to it and gave us 3p an hour extra.
Man I feel so valued!
Minimum wage caught up with my salary. They cut my pension contribution to comply instead of giving me a pay rise
Fairly recently I got a laughable increase of £100 per year to bring it in line with NMW.
An old work colleague of mine got called in the office for a promotion, he asked what the increase would be and the boss said none. ‘You have to prove yourself first’ in other words, he meant to do the job for no extra pay for Atleast two years before we’ll even consider paying you more money… they did this with everyone. I was young and naive at the time, my first proper full time job and I fell for it… worked a higher role for two years for no extra pay or benefits thinking I would get rewarded.. never happened , companies would have us working for free if they could make no mistake
Mitchells and Butlers generously increased pay by 1.5%
I guess they didn’t care about the rate of inflation. Needless to say that I don’t work with them anymore.
Had a year where I absolutely knocked it put of the park, was given 1%, queried it and my manager said ‘I’m very comfortable with your compensation’.
Applied for another internal position the next day that by no rights I should have gotten, they decided to take a chance and never looked back. She actually acted hurt when she found out as if I had personally betrayed her. I wish I’d said I was very comfortable with it!
Got called into the office in Jan. I was really valued and was getting a 4% payrise but don’t tell anyone because not everyone got that. I’m a blabbermouth and the most senior non management so I put the feelers out and found out the guy who’d been there 4 months to my 4 years got the same lol
Never understood it as that boss was one to take fools so I wouldn’t have expected it. Also he was the most honest boss I’ve had but then pay is not just your worth but a way to keep some of us down
A while ago now I was on £17k and my boss called me into his office, handed me a letter and had the demeanour of someone doing me a big favour.
I opened the letter.
They were bumping me up to £17,250.
A whole £20.83 per month BEFORE TAX.
Safe to say I left the job soon after.
Getting 0% stings
I was a supervisor at WHSmith, the assistant manager left, and the main manager lived 4 hours away and ‘worked’ across 2 stores so I would be manager day to day, rotas, nightshift etc. and they offered it to me.. For.. drum roll £100 extra a year. I was on 50p above minimum wage as a supervisor, but good news, to be the manager, I would be on 54p an hour above minimum wage lol 4p pay rise from supervisor to manager.
Once I got a bonus for £33. In respect of an entire year.
At one of my previous jobs, the manager clearly didn’t like me so when I handed my notice in, I think she was a bit peeved that she needed to encourage me to stay as the area manager did like me.
She offered me an extra 10p per hour to stay. I just laughed and left the room.
In 1967 I was working in a forge being paid tree pound five bob for a fortyfive hour week, I got a thrupence an hour increase and a King Edward cigar (no money) for working Saturday afternoons. I vomited every time I smoked it.
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In my 1st full time job after I left school, I got a pay rise of 23p per week! I’d only been there a few weeks when the gave annual pay rises to everyone, my weekly pay went from £30.77 to £31 dead
Laughs in NHS 2013 – 2023 😂
£0. Went through a ridiculous boarding process to go from junior project manager to project manager, jumped through the extra hoops and eventually got the promotion, only to be told there was no pay rise. Complained and eventually got a ~£1k/year rise. Suffice to say I’m not longer at that company!
I actually got asked once, if I would mind not getting a pay rise whilst everyone else did, as there had been a mistake and it wasn’t budgeted for. Needless to say I said ‘no, I’ll have the pay rise please.’
Shittyfcuks at work used to give annual payrises, ranging 1-3%, for people who were doing the daily hands on/ hard graft. Managers and Snr Management, received in the range 10-25%. After retiring early, my annual pension rises have been in the range 4-9%, these last 6 years, thanks to the average rate of inflation.
I think the most insulting is when you ask for a modest pay rise, you get a new job on more than you originally asked and then and only then do they say they’d match this new offer. That’s corporate life but it’s so annoying.
Not so much a pay rise. But a company I once worked for made a tonne of profit one year, and gave us all a £5 voucher that had been earned through fuel cards.
Now Im not fussed on a bonus, if I get one I get one. If I don’t I don’t. I’m paid my wage, and that’s what I expect.
But to add to the voucher they sent it to everyone with printed messages.
For all your hard work this year, we want you to share in the joy and reward. It was then stamped with the company logo at the bottom.
It was priceless
In 2021-2022, I grafted hard on a £20k a year job to try and earn my place. I was only 21, and was quite grateful to have the job at all, but I did have a degree and had other option but this felt like the right place at the right time amid COVID.
I worked my arse off to show my value in that year. There was only 3 people in my office and just 5 in the entire company, so I was shouldering a lot of work. I was also consistently praised by colleagues for all my commitment and hard work, and quality.
In early 2022, without scheduling a meeting or anything at all, I was approached by the CEO and MD whilst I was walking up the stairs to the office to start my day. They offered me a rise from 20k to 22.5k.
They were shocked when I didn’t accept it on the spot. When they asked why, I told them that I thought, considering my hard work and value, it might be something more like 27k (average wage for a post-grad). I also said, calmly and politely, that if they didn’t think I was worth that, that it was ok and I would need to look for something else.
The MD of course accused me of holding them hostage and claiming I’m ungrateful. He agreed to 27k, but forced me to wait for 6 months for pretty much no reason. He also asked colleagues to see if they thought I deserved it, and they all said I did.
It was only later that I realised that the minimum wage for people my age was increased to avoid 22k around the time they offered it to me. So, they never wanted to reward me, they just wanted to stay compliant with payment law.
One of the most insulting and disappointing moments of my life.
Assuming you are full time and work 40 hours a week, that’s a pay rise of £3,8,48 a year.
It’s also a 3% pay raise if you are on minimum wage. That’s above inflation.
That’s on par percentage wise with a normal to good pay raise.
I once had a pay rise of a whole pound (I think it timed up with min wage rise and I ended up 50p over minimum wage). 2 weeks later I was told I cost too much and didn’t have a job anymore.
I’ve since heard the person who was there before me had a very similar deal!
Granted it’s not minimum wage but I was freelancing at a tv station, after about a year of it my manager called me in and told me I’d be getting a rise to match the other freelancers. Cool, thanks very much. When the payslips arrived, I’d been given a pay reduction. I queried it and subsequently was not called back. Weird as fuck, to this day I don’t understand it.
I once spotted a problem that could have earned us a £2m fine from the regulator. I got a £50 bonus the following month.
In fairness, that did earn me respect and got me noticed and it’s been worth a lot more than £50 to me since. Not quite £2m though.
I had been working at a company for a few years. Got promoted to management. But because I had been given annual payrises from performance reviews I was already over the minimum wage for management. So I got promoted to a more demanding job but my pay stayed the same. With the promise that being a manager meant my pay ceiling was higher so in future I COULD be earning more.
Don’t know if this counts.
7k LESS for a job I have 8 years experience in AND I had worked with ALL of that companies current clients already, they knew my current salary before I interviewed.
X2 interviews later they offered me the job and 7K less than I was on AND then said my currently salary was “generous” needless to say I refused their “offer”.
“Everyone’s just getting a £300 pay rise this year. Which is quite a lot for you, but of course it’s nothing for me”
(how my boss told me about my salary uplift)
I had recently received a ‘promotion’ without formal acknowledgment(I was lumped with higher responsibility because no one else wanted to deal with the mess of this project) When I enquired for the umpteenth time when they planned to give me a raise and a title update, they said I was due to receive a 3.2% cost of living increase the next month.
Inflation was at 7%.
Was supervisor of a clothing store, was told my visual merchandising was the best in the area and helped increase sales massively during my appraisal, I asked for a pay rise to reflect so and after two days they came back with 5p per hour, told them to stick it and left a week later
1%, split in two, 0.5% in April, the remaining 0.5% in October, I didn’t hang around for long.
Since moving back to the UK in 2018, I’ve only worked at 2 places long enough to qualify for a wage increase. The first one I got about £2/hr more over the course of the 2 years I was there, but it worked out to be about 50p/hr more every time the minimum wage went up.
Next place I was earning about 20p/hr more than minimum wage and then in April they just adjusted for that, so no actual pay-rise, just adjusted for the new minimum.
Nowadays is ridiculous though, with wage stagnation.
I interviewed for an assistant manager position at FatFace, with the actual store manager saying he would be at other stores a lot, so I would have to step up and essentially replace him most days. The general cashiers/shop-floor workers were on about 10p/hr more than minimum wage, while the job I applied for was about 25p/hr more than that. It’s not like it’s rare either. So many team-leader/assistant manager roles are being advertised at about 15-50p more/hr than the lowest rungs, it’s no wonder they can’t fill these positions.
At the start of my career I was moving and my rent was going up. I told my boss that I wasn’t going to be able to afford to live with the cost of travel and new rent and provided solid evidence that what they were paying me was £4.5k less than the industry standard in the city and then provided evidence of how what I was currently doing went way above and beyond my job description and what other doing a role like mine would be doing. They then offered me £1k payrise and acted like they were doing me a favour.
Needless to say, I found another job at a much better company which was a big step up and £30k payrise. My boss was surprised that I was leaving and asked me why. It was so good to see his jaw drop when he realised I was probably now being paid the same as him in the new role.
In 2012 I was on minimum wage. I worked somewhere for close to a year and they hired a new guy, who complained loudly he was on 2k more than me despite being a new graduate and having no more experience than me. I went and asked for a raise… they came back with £50 a year.
A couple of years ago, I’d been in a company for 8 years and overhauled a bunch of systems and saved us a ton of time and money. They emailed me to say they were so impressed with my performance they were thrilled to give me a 0.5% payrise.
During covid we got a company-wide payrise of 1.7% and they told us we should all be grateful to still have jobs. This was during an annual company meeting where they reported record profits and told us they were downsizing the office and saving a bunch of money since everyone was working from home now.
Years ago, called into an all staff meeting where we were told they were bringing in new contracts & increasing our hourly wage by around 10%. Made a huge song & dance about it, slapping each other on the back about how they valued us all.
Neglected to mention our paid breaks were being removed so the actual monthly rise was about £7 net. They acted horrified that we were so ungrateful when we pointed it out.
I was made redundant about 10 years ago, but got offered a job soon after at a previous competitor.
The wage was slightly lower than I’d previously been on but only by maybe £2k/year.
I was hired with the agreement that they would start me on this lower wage but we could review it after x? months and discuss an increase.
They did eventually give me the increase but it only really got me back to my previous wage.
Then followed the annual argument with the manager over the yearly increases which ranged from 0-3%. Which didn’t even keep up with inflation despite the company doing really well and them being pleased with my performance.
I eventually decided to move on, found a new job and handed my notice in.
At this point my manager panicked and offered me a 25% pay increase to stay. It pissed me off so much that I still left for the new job despite it now being a lower salary. I didn’t want to stay somewhere that didn’t want to pay you what they thought you were worth until you threatened to leave.
The most annoying part for me is that everything else about working for that company was great.
I once worked for a pretty nice family firm, they worked us hard but it was generally put back into the system.
After being there 12 months they brought in a new manager, he kept promising pay rises as he came in on nearly double the previous guy.
5 Months later and no payrises he finally said we were getting our payrise
There were 5 of us on the team. He brought in two packs of Fosters lager (6 cans per pack) and said that we’d be allowed to take home one can per month each on payday as part of a new incentive scheme.
The entire team, bar one guy, was gone within 2 weeks
I was asked to run a global department at the company. Like 3 weeks into the job I’d been pushing to build better performance tracking and, lo and behold, uncovered a massive dumpster fire about to go full flame.
Fixing the issue was insanely expensive. Spare the details but we needed to hire like 30 people, build entirely new tech foundations, and install a tiered management structure in a very short amount of time. Many millions to fix but doing nothing would have been even more catastrophic.
I learned what I needed to learn. I did what I needed to do. Late nights, weekends, hands on work myself, everything you’d expect. I won the favor of my entire team, we turned things around to the point that we actually became an industry standard re performance in this space. Altogether a resounding success in a matter of about 6-7 months.
Year end pops up and I’m expecting a MASSIVE payday. I probably made the company at least a billion dollars. They pulled me into a room, told me how amazing the work was, and then proceeded to tell me that because I was the leader at the time things went wrong I have to accept some of the responsibility for the problem coming up. They gave me a lateral bonus and lateral salary. To “show their support and belief in me” they gave me some shadow equity shares worth about a million bucks which wouldn’t vest for 5 years, and even then it’s only half value…another 5 for full vesting.
I was floored and even now, year and years later, I think about how shitty this was almost every day.
Was told once that the yearly pay rise was going the way of the dodo and when I asked about it was told “we don’t believe in paying people more year on year for doing the same job” to which I replied, “so you do believe in paying less year on year?”…”how is it less?”…”inflation”. “We don’t take that into account”. ” I do, heres my notice”
When I worked in hospitality I went from bar staff (min wage) to bar manager which took 4 years for an extra £0.05p per hour. Handed in notice shortly after
Had a call center job a while ago earning something like 13.5k when minimum wage was around 12k.
I was the top performer in a department of 100 people and they were doing a pay review and built it up. The guy delivering the news looked happy to be giving good news for once but I looked at the letter he passed to me and it went up to something like £13,900, effectively about £25/month better off after tax. Somehow it’s more insulting than telling me there’s no pay rise, I left shortly after.
Isn’t 37p an hour about £700 a year if you’re on minimum wage? It’s about 3 percent assuming a 40 hour week at 25k, which isn’t great, but it’s not wildly different from the pay increase in a lot of salaried roles. It just sounds worse when you calculate it in pence.
An extra 20p PER MONTH. This was in a primary school.
They increased our working week from 37 to 39 hours, but the pay increase meant hour hourly pay went down. They tried to argue that we were getting paid more.
50p hourly rate increase but only monday to friday. I was working weekends
Anything less than inflation means you are earning less each year. Don’t be “loyal” to those companies, especially if they act as if they are doing you a favour.
I used to work 3 nights a week, 10pm till 8am. Wasn’t a bad job, worked ok for me. We got told about a change coming in with the new pay rise.
The new change? 4 nights a week, 10pm until 7am and no longer being paid for breaks. So it worked out that we would be in an extra night for probably 2 hours extra pay at most on the new rate, fucked that off instantly.
Ooh I got 0.08% once. On a graduate scheme which was given 2% of the pay budget as an increase across the whole scheme, so both the grads and the people who administered it. Of course we, the graduates, got the tiny increase which was used to give the managers a much larger one (is think it was around 3.5% for them). That was great, considering the graduate scheme already paid about £10k less than non-scheme employees at the same level.
‘Keep up the good work’ and they gave me a bag of M&M’s (the blue kind)
50p a month was mine. They made a big sing song and dance about it, how they valued us, we’re the heart of the business, yadda yadda yadda. Truth behold, two months later minimum wage went up by the exact same amount so i made an extra 15quid for two months to be back at square one. So fucking insulting. Best part is, they couldnt understand why their team retention was suddenly so fucking poor and even had to shut down a couple of the restaurants bevause they did this every year and genuinely thought we were not any wiser
One place I was working, I was requesting £2k increase to cover travel and they kept saying no. Moment I got another job offer (everything was better career wise and they agreed to give me what I wanted), my manager came back with a 25% increase offer.
Most would say I should have taken the 25% increase. I found it extremely insulting and did a big fuck you to my boss
Back in ’98, I was 19 with a newborn and on maternity leave. When baby was 4 months old, I went back to work. It was my first job, and I was getting £3 an hour, everyone else was on £3.25. When I got my next wageslip it said £3.25, I thought awesome, but checked with one of the owners (husband and wife). I asked the wife, and her response was basically “I hope not”. The end result was, she didn’t think I was worth the extra 25 pence an hour. I was leaving my 4 month old to do this job, and I didn’t warrant an extra £3 a week. I left that day and never went back.
Back when I first started working (only 10 years ago), and after working there for 1.5 years, my first job finally gave me a pay rise up to £21,000.
A week later, my boss (the owner) declared that the company wasn’t making enough money, and cut everyone’s hours from 40 hours down to 37 hours, meaning my pay rise was basically gone.
I worked in the Third Sector for a charity helping homeless young adults from 2010-20. In that time we got 1% annual rises while my mum who has never worked was getting triple locked pension rises way above that.
Insulting and annoying
I was offered a 1p pay rise at ASDA if I was willing to be a first aider.
I got a promotion to a ‘senior’ position at my last job, going from about £22k to £26.5k.
Only to find out our brand new start I was training to be under me was on the same money from day one. Not much of a raise really is it.
I left 2 months after that and took a £10k increase elsewhere with less responsibility.
Girl at work got 2p
Was an insult
I got 20p
Oooo I think I might win this one – 2p!!
Long time pre minimum wage when I was washing pots in a pub at 16, we were on £3.18 an hour and the pubco changed hands so we got moved to their rate of £3.20 an hour!
Had no other offer during the 2 years or so and I stopped working there after a while on the bar after 18 to go to uni
I started a job in March, in April got a letter thanking me for my service and congratulations on my pay rise. £25,396 per hour! Finally all my hard work has been recognised! I still have the letter somewhere.
Got an email a couple of days later saying sorry but that was the yearly rate. They’d just brought me up to minumum wage as required by law.
Shit job anyway, arsehole manager. I left shortly after anyway.
Thats 2.6% on a £27k salary. For well over 15 years all i experienced was 2-3%, sometimes 0% despite excellent end of year ratings.
Id say you got a normal deal unless you earn more.
I once had a similar thing, the review, the praise, the bigging up, only to discover the “pay rise” they’d given me for all my brilliant work was the new minimum wage increase. I quit that day. 😬
4-years of no pay rises…like all of us in the public sector. Happy times.
Recruiters keep offering me a pay cut for a “great opportunity” that’s 100 miles away, with no expenses. Fuck off. 🤣
I started an entry-level job that paid minimum wage. Because I had just graduated from uni I was offered a generous 15p/ph more than the rest of the team. 6 months later minimum wage went up by 15p and I received an automated letter in the post congratulating me on receiving a pay increase of 0p.
It was £100 / £150 increase for the whole year. Worked out about £5 extra per month, I just remember my manager trying to hype it up and say how great it was. This was just after I’d been nominated for employee of the year.
About 10 years ago I got given a £1.20/hour pay rise which was fairly substantial relative to what I was on at the time. I was really happy with it until I had a conversation about my birthday, which was in a months time; I was turning 21…
My manager and I both celebrated 10 years at the company within about 6 months of each other. He got a travel voucher worth £5000 and access to some of the best corporate hospitality in the world.
Apparently there was a change in policy in the intervening months but nonetheless he gathered the whole office and with a straight face presented me with my £50 Amazon voucher.