Everybody’s got a co-worker, right, who does this?Marches in every couple months and demands more money or else he or she will leave? And the question isn’t whether he or she deserves more money, it’s whether blackmail is a long-term negotiating tactic. You can only pull that card so many times.
Because honestly, there’s a part of me that gets the bonus argument; Mr. A used to work at a place that gave out bonuses. Nothing close to what’s being talked about with AIG (dude, can you imagine the blog we’d have if it had been? Hot and cold running interns, crack vans every day, a compound in the French Quarter where you’d all be welcome to shack up …) but a bonus, still. And there were people who banked on those bonuses, counted on them to pay off debt each year or make a major purchase, so I can see the argument that jerking those bonuses away is devastating to them.
The problem, though, is that this shit happens all the time. People count on their jobs, right, and those jobs get yanked away when the world economy goes kablooie and there’s no arguing that you were budgeting for that salary so give it to me anyway. People count on all kinds of stuff, and there are times when your bosses are bullshitting you about how much they want to pay you and you deserve to squeeze them a little, and times when genuinely, there is no money for you, so threatening to leave is kind of pointless.
Such as when you’ve been bailed out by the taxpayers after you kind of wrecked the whole world. So maybe on balance it would be better not to threaten to leave lest your employers, at this time you and me in the case of AIG, look at you across the desk and say, “Well, go on then, split already.”
A.