‘Are we really going to play this game?’: Worker gets denied raise. So she tells boss he can only afford 3 of her working hours instead of 8 due to inflation

A corporate employee had the perfect response ready when her boss turned down her request for a raise — that he could now only afford 3 of her working hours instead of 8.

@valeryromanchuk Are we really going to play this game?🤡 #corporatetiktok #corporatehumor #work #corporatelife #trend #corporate #fyp ♬ lowER - Destinyrenee

“When my boss denies my raise request I tell him that due to inflation, now he can only afford 3 of my working hours instead of 8,” Valery Romanchuk (@valeryromanchuk) wrote in her video’s text overlay. It has been viewed 90,800 times as of this writing.

Valery often creates content about her corporate job. In another video posted in September 2022, the office worker addressed why she “always complains”, saying, “Because I wanted Gen Z judging me for not investing in crypto and not starting an OnlyFans."

According to Investopedia, employees receive an average increase of 3% in their annual salary when they get a raise. But even if a worker builds up the courage to request a raise from their boss, their compensation isn't guaranteed as the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a discrepancy between increases in salaries and the rising cost of living.

In fact, one survey showed that in 2022, "corporate executives, management, professional employees, and other support workers could expect raises as high as 3% while salaries would increase by 2.8% for production and manual laborers." At the same time, salaries for retail jobs were expected to rise only 2.9%.

Valery isn't the only worker who was denied a raise by her boss. Other creators have also taken to TikTok to share their own stories of instances in which their supervisors did not grant them pay increases.

User Ash B (fromashwithlove) recently revealed that her former employer begged her to stay on after they refused to give her a raise and she got another job.

“You literally told me that you were not going to be giving me any sort of promotion or extra pay to do the extra work that you wanted me to do,” the worker told her former boss.

In another instance of a worker being chronically underpaid, former Target employee Sydney (@freddiebensoncousin) shared that instead of receiving no raise, she received a mere 10 cents raise each year, a common trend among other retail workers in the creator's comment section.

“I literally got a three-cent raise one year. I honestly would’ve been less insulted with no raise at all,” one commenter on Sydney's video wrote. 

The Daily Dot reached out to Valery via TikTok comment.

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