Man, I needed a raise. Simple as that. I’ve been with the same company for three years, busting my butt, and watching the cost of living climb while my salary just sat there like a lump of coal. I knew it was time to move the needle, but just walking in and whining about my bills? That’s not me. I needed a strategy.
Enter November 2023. I’m a Virgo, and yeah, I read the horoscopes. It’s a dumb habit, I know, but this time, the career one hit me right between the eyes. It wasn’t about luck; it was about precision and preparation. The advice was super specific: you need to ask the right way, at the right time, with cold, hard facts.
I decided to treat this like a mission. The first thing I did was block out two full weekends just for research. The horoscope said a Virgo needs a “dossier of undeniable proof,” and that’s exactly what I set out to build. I pulled every quarterly report I had access to. I dug through the Jira boards from the past 18 months. I compiled a list of every single fire I put out that nobody else even knew about.
The Undeniable Proof Checklist: Virgo Style
- I isolated and measured all the times I completed a project under budget. Not just “I was fast,” but “Project Alpha finished 15 days early, saving an estimated $4,500 in contractor fees.”
- I quantified the impact of my daily tasks. When I optimized the database query, I recorded that load times dropped from 8 seconds to 1.5 seconds, which directly improved user conversion by 3%.
- I identified my ‘replacement cost.’ I researched the market rate for my exact role and experience in the region. My current salary? It was a joke. I used the high end of the market data, but I asked for a number slightly below that to look ‘reasonable.’
This whole process was draining, but the horror story from my past kept me going. I remembered my very first corporate job, maybe six years ago. I had been there for eighteen months, doing amazing work, and I felt like I deserved more. I walked into my boss’s office one Friday afternoon, totally unprepared, and just blurted out, “I need a 20% raise or I’m walking.”
That boss, a total shark, just smiled. He said, “That’s ambitious. Show me the numbers.” I stammered. I didn’t have any. I had nothing but feelings and a sense of entitlement. He shot me down flat. He told me to come back when I could speak his language: money and results. I felt like an idiot. I lost all my leverage instantly. That whole embarrassment taught me a painful lesson: don’t confuse your hard work with measurable value.
So, fast forward back to November 2023. I would not repeat that mistake. The Virgo horoscope actually gave me the framework to avoid it. I scheduled the meeting for a Tuesday at 10 AM—the time the stars supposedly aligned for clarity and communication. I printed off my dossier—not too thick, but packed with infographics I made myself.
I practiced the pitch maybe twenty times, standing in front of the mirror, making sure I kept my tone professional and boringly logical. No passion, just data. I focused my delivery entirely on their needs. “Because I did X, Y, and Z, you are now making $50,000 more a year. My proposal is an investment in that continued success.”
I walked in, feeling the anxiety, but my hands didn’t shake because the binder I was holding felt like a shield. I laid out the facts. My boss flipped through the pages. He didn’t interrupt me. He couldn’t argue with the percentage increases I had directly tied to my projects. He tried to lowball me slightly, naturally. He offered 8% instead of the 10% I asked for.
Because I had prepared a clear response—again, not emotional, just strategic—I countered immediately. I said, “I can accept 8.5% and a commitment to reviewing my title change in six months.” I held eye contact. That’s the Virgo advice: be firm on the value, flexible on the delivery.
He signed off on it right there. It worked. It wasn’t magic, it was just preparation disguised as astrology. I realized that the horoscope didn’t grant the raise; it forced me to do the groundwork that made the raise undeniable. The difference between failure and success was literally a stack of paper and a formal meeting. That’s how you get what you need: ask the right way.
