Source: Getty
It can be difficult to explain inflation and the surprising rise in the cost of living to someone who has already paid off their home. Especially if you were able to purchase at a time when property values were much lower. Saving up to buy a home in America is harder than ever. In fact, it was easier to buy a home during the Great Depression than it is now.
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What’s even harder is if this person is the one who controls your payroll, like your boss, and doesn’t mind referencing these stats to justify employee raises. When using anecdotal evidence to justify one’s views on fair pay, it’s easy to completely overlook that other people’s financial and current economic circumstances are vastly different than yours.
This was a topic recently covered by two TikTokers, @maryefrost and @chris_gerb, who delve into the downsides of “having a baby boomer boss.”
“Your whole generation just doesn’t understand what all the markets are doing,” Mary says at the beginning of a synthetic video that’s going viral on TikTok.
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Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
She then appears to refer to a conversation she had with her boomer boss. When her boss asked how much she plays her employee, she replied $12 an hour. Mary is shocked by what she sees. She said, “$12 an hour is what she got as a lifeguard in high school in 2001.”
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Chris then talks about working at a bank after graduating from college. “When I graduated college with a finance degree, my first job was as a bank teller making $9 an hour. After taxes and health insurance, my take-home pay was less than $600 every two weeks. Growing up, I was taking home $1,200 a month with a college degree and working full time in the US.”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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He continued, “My boss was a baby boomer, probably 55 at the time, and this was 14 years ago. One day, we were sitting in the lunch room talking, and one of the employees I was told I needed to tip because we were getting married and she wanted us all to donate $30 as a gift.”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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Chris must explain that he cannot afford even a single dollar for the amount of money he is currently making in that job, especially considering that time, he had to follow a tight budget to make ends meet. I had to. Around 2008, that gas price was a staggering $4.00 a gallon.
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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“I told her I’m sorry but I can’t afford to do that. And she looked at me like she was blown away by my comment. I work full time at this bank. And I’m making $18,000 a year, and she just shrugged, but I was making $1,200 a month because I had to pay for an apartment.”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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He also said, “Car payments, student loan payments, health insurance because I just graduated, gas at $4 a gallon at the time, this was 2008.” The distance from his place of work to where he lives meant he drove a fair amount of time to work, dropping a lot of money on gas in the process. ”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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“I didn’t have the money, so I couldn’t afford this $30 wedding gift,” he continued, noting that his boss initially brought him the good news.
“She comes to me in a month and tells Chris she has great news. Guess what I’ll give you a raise. I need a raise and I need more money so Excited, she says I raised you to $9.10 an hour.”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
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That’s right, he got a raise of 10 cents an hour, or 80 cents for each day he worked full time. Long live him. “Yes, she wanted in her heart to give me her 10-cent pay raise, which equates to about $4 a week for her, or $200 for her a year. And sadly she didn’t realize how insulting it was.”
Source: TikTok | @Chris_Garve
Many TikTokers report that starting salaries for some positions have not increased at all in some industries. One woman said she had a job as a bank teller 20 years ago and that she started at $9 an hour.
