his happened two weeks ago and it has been eating me alive.
I work in a open office. My coworker Greg sits directly across from me. Our monitors face each other. I have never once looked at his screen on purpose. I want to make that clear because what happened was entirely an accident and also entirely his fault.
Greg got up to go to the bathroom and left his screen unlocked. Normal. People do this. I don't care. But he left a PDF open and it was zoomed to like 400%. I don't know why anyone would zoom a PDF to 400% but Greg did and because of that I could read it from four feet away without even trying. It was his offer letter. From when he was hired. With his salary. In 48pt font basically.
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He makes $31,000 more than me.
We have the same title. Same team. He started eight months after me. I trained him. I trained the man who makes thirty one thousand dollars more than me. I showed him how to use our project management tool. I walked him through the client onboarding process. I sat with him for two hours explaining our filing system which honestly even I don't fully understand but I pretended I did because I was his mentor.
And he makes 31k more than me.
I cannot stop doing math now. Every meeting we're in together I'm calculating. Ok this meeting is one hour, he's making X per hour, I'm making Y per hour, the DIFFERENCE between us sitting in this same meeting listening to the same person talk about Q3 projections is $14.90. I am losing $14.90 of relative value every hour I sit next to Greg. I've started a spreadsheet. I know this is unhinged. The spreadsheet has columns.
The worst part is Greg is good at his job. He's not some failson coasting on nepotism. He's competent, he's pleasant, he brings in those little stroopwafel cookies for the office on Fridays. He has never done a single thing wrong to me. This man is my friend. I went to his birthday dinner last month. I bought him a gift. A GIFT. With my lesser salary.
I looked up his job posting from when he was hired. It listed the salary range. The range started at what I make and went up to what he makes. So technically we're both in range. I'm just at the bottom and he's at the top. Same range. Same title. Different ends. Like two people on the same bus except he's in first class and I'm sitting on the wheel.
I know I should negotiate. I know I should talk to my manager. I know the ma
