No Worries is a fortnightly column exploring the ever-evolving and ever-confusing world of modern relationships. Whether it’s with a judgy parent, a friend being weird, a toxic ex, or an insufferable colleague, relationships are not easy. DM us on Instagram (we’ll keep it anonymous) or ask for a friend—your guide Cheryl-Ann Couto is here to help.
Q.
I’m a 25-year-old woman working for a well-known corporate. My colleague, also 25, is in a similar role—and we come with the same sort of experience. I can’t be sure, but I have a feeling that she’s getting paid more than I am. Since we are not close friends, I’m a little scared to have this conversation with her. Also discussing salaries at my office is a bit of a no-no. But by not talking about it openly, aren’t we doing exactly what big corporations want: not challenging their policies or advocating for fair pay?
Why can’t we discuss our salaries the way we would discuss which university we went to? I think the only thing stopping me is that whether I find out that she earns more than me or I earn more than her, it’ll make things awkward. But isn’t that exactly why there should be transparency? How can I broach this taboo subject without making her uncomfortable?
A.
Dear Corporate Renegade,
Somewhere between your preoccupation with your colleague’s salary and your righteous outrage at the machine, I think we might be missing the vital connective tissue of: whoa, what brought this on?
It is almost as if you’re already sure she’s being paid more than you—perhaps even undeservedly?—and if confronted about it, she will wilfully keep this information from you, the corporate stooge that she is. Now, either you have this on good authority, you picked it up at the watercooler, or things have been busy in your mind palace.
Whichever it is, one artefact glinting through all this bother is that you’re clearly not happy with what you’re making. You have a sense you’re being shafted. I’d hazard that your preoccupation with your colleague’s salary might in fact have nothing to do with her at all, and everything to do with what you think you deserve and are not getting.
Well, I’m here to set your mind at rest: you’re probably right. Women in every industry, including young women in the early stages of their corporate careers such as yourself, are a statistically underpaid demographic. It’s a fact as common as hair.
Your impulse to collect information to substantiate your feeling is the right one, especially if you intend to advocate for better pay. But perhaps an inquisition of your unsuspecting colleague with an impassioned speech about worker solidarity is not the immediate first line of action. For one, you’re exactly right about people fearing the knowledge that they make more or less than others—money is the lifeblood of this capitalist hamster wheel we’re on, and what a person earns carries incredible emotional charge. If your colleague feels cornered, she won’t be inclined to spill her compensation right after. You’ll need to ease her in, give her more context, show-not-tell her how this shared knowledge is power for her too.
I’d recommend apportioning some of that assumptions-making energy into market research. Go sleuthing online for what the compensation range for a role like yours, with experience like yours, at companies like yours, is. Seeing as how yours is a well-known corporate, they probably have salary slabs listed somewhere on the intranet—find those. And, it’s woefully uncommon, but if you do happen to have industry elders who’d make the time to draw you the big picture, now’s the time to encash that privilege.
If the research bears out your resentment, you could finally approach your colleague. On a more even keel, share your findings in case they’re of use to her and ask if she might help you bolster your cause. And because the first rule of change is that most dampening fact that it begins with yourself, you could volunteer to disclose your compensation first, so she has a chance to hint relationally if she’s not comfortable naming an exact figure.
If she agrees, and it turns out she does earn more than you do, you can now direct all the angst where it rightfully belongs: politely and professionally, at your manager. If it turns out she makes less than you do, you’ve just done her a solid-arity, given her an unexpected leg-up to do with what she will, and nobody hates that. Then there is secret option number three: she declines. As is her right. The other dampening fact about change is that people have got to want in of their own free will.
I suspect though that with all the intel you’ve since collected, that’s not going to feel like a major blow anymore; a minor chip at best. Don’t let it put you off your quest, you still have your fair pay to go get. I wish you well, dear corporate renegade, and am also now considering a career pivot to HR. But, like, cool HR. That actually benefits employees. Revolution, am I right?
