Man, 2016. What a pile of crap that year was, at first. I remember seeing that headline, that Virgo thing, and I actually clicked it. I was so damn desperate for a sign, any sign, that my work life wasn’t just a treadmill to nowhere. A big raise? Sure, I needed one like I needed air. But let me tell you, it wasn’t the stars that did it. It was pure, ugly panic and a lot of late nights.
The Dead-End and the Horoscope Lie
I was working at this place, a small logistics firm, doing some glorified data entry and maybe a little IT support when the real IT guy was out sick. My salary had been stuck. Stuck for three years, maybe four. Every annual review, it was the same garbage: “Great work, team player, but the budget…” Blah, blah, blah. I’d walk out of that meeting ready to punch a wall.
I distinctly remember checking that 2016 Virgo thing right after a particularly insulting review where they gave me a $50 bonus instead of a raise. Fifty bucks! That probably paid for one of my gas fill-ups for the month. I was reading that ‘big raise’ prophecy, and I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is how dumb I’ve gotten. I’m letting some website decide my financial future.’ That was the trigger.
Something had to snap.
It wasn’t a car breaking down or a massive bill; it was just the slow, soul-crushing realization that if I stayed, I would be stuck forever. I looked at my boss, who had been there twenty years, and thought, ‘That’s my future. A slightly nicer cubicle and the same lousy paycheck.’ That was my career horoscope.
The Practice: How I Forced The Raise
Forget the stars. I started my own ‘career plan.’ This was my practice record:
- Phase 1: The Inventory (August 2016): I stopped looking at my job title and started listing what I actually did. I realized I’d taught myself all the basic SQL for reports, figured out the inventory management system when it crashed, and even built a stupid little internal dashboard using some free web tools. I wrote it all down, even the stuff I thought was ‘not my job.’
- Phase 2: The Attack Resume (September 2016): My old resume was two pages of boring crap. I completely rewrote it, focusing only on results. Instead of ‘Managed data entry,’ it became ‘Reduced reporting time by 40% through custom SQL queries.’ I didn’t lie, but I sure as hell made it sound like I was a coding wizard, which I was definitely not.
- Phase 3: The Cold War (October 2016): This was the painful part. I spent every lunch break, every evening, applying. Not just sending my resume into the void, but reaching out to people on that business networking site—complete strangers—and asking for five minutes of their time. I figured the worst they could say was no. And oh boy, did a lot of them say no.
I remember one day, I had three interviews lined up back-to-back, all phone screens, and I had to take them in my car during my breaks. I was sweating, whispering answers into my phone about ‘leveraging synergy’ or some other corporate garbage I’d read online. I felt like a spy.
One place, a mid-sized e-commerce company, actually called me back. The role was ‘Operations Analyst.’ Sounded fancy, and honestly, I didn’t know what the hell an Operations Analyst did, but I knew it paid more than my current gig.
The Negotiation and The Payoff
I went through three rounds of interviews with them. Each time, I just winged it, taking my real experiences—the dashboard I built, the inventory fix—and translating them into ‘analyst’ terms. I decided right then, I wouldn’t just ask for a raise; I would demand one.
When they finally made the offer, it was $15,000 more than I was making. Fifteen thousand! I almost choked on my coffee.
But the practice wasn’t done. I remembered reading somewhere that you should never accept the first offer. So, I took a deep breath, and I countered. I asked for another $5,000, bringing it to a nice, round number that sounded authoritative.
They hemmed and hawed for a day, and then they called back and agreed. I got a $20,000 raise. All of it had absolutely nothing to do with being a Virgo in September 2016.
The Real Lesson Learned
The moment I gave notice at my old job? Priceless. My boss looked totally shocked, like I was some indispensable part of their broken machine. He tried to counter-offer, which was insulting because it was still $10,000 less than the new job. I just smiled, shook my head, and walked away.
They kept that job opening posted for months after I left. They just couldn’t find anyone willing to do the work I was doing for the pathetic money they were offering. I’d check the listing every so often, and the listed salary would creep up a little bit, then a little more. It was like watching karma unfold on a job board. The job I was doing for peanuts finally required a decent salary, but they lost the guy who was willing to work for less.
That was my big ‘career boost’ in 2016. No cosmic event, no alignment of planets. Just me finally stopping the reading of stupid horoscopes and starting to actually do the hard, scary work of finding a better deal. If you want a big raise, don’t look at the stars; look at your exit strategy. That’s the only truth.
