someyougiveaway

"You asked for a pittance".

That's what my boss told me yesterday, referring to my salary which became a hot topic in one of his meetings with Human Resources. He said that I could have gotten more had I asked for it when HR asked me how much I think I was worth three months ago. I wanted to tell him, "You see, three months ago I had my head up my ass" but I thought that wouldn't help my case. So I kept my mouth shut as he ranted about HR getting away with murder. I can easily dismiss it as pure office politics but when your boss had your pay in his agenda with top management, you'd know something was wrong. Now the whole department knows how much I make which doesn't bother me more than the fact that they know I'm getting what I'm getting because I asked for it. Gad.

That's the problem. My whole history of settling for less than what I deserve is catching up on me.This is what rankles me. Forget my infamous salary--that will be settled in the next few months. By that time, all hell would have broken loose and HR will just have to give in to the boss' demand---put Mina back into the curve, even if she was the one who broke it in the first place. Finis. Case closed.By then I should be getting twenty thousand more. By then I should have shoved it into my thick head that what I'm getting now is nothing to sneeze at. It's just that I deserved more. I probably would have, by then. I got my head in the right place nowadays.

I just wish I didn't settle so easily before with other things. You know, other things.  It's one thing to be foolish, and another to shortchange yourself. That's me quoting myself--maybe I'd wear that on my forehead one of these days just to remind me that some things you don't get to change. Once you've settled, you're done. It's part of history. It sparks a chain of actions and reactions. Unlike with my stupid salary. that can be fixed.Though that will be etched in corporate memory, who will care about some lawyer's missed-by-a-mile entry-level package? No one. 

It doesn't work that way with other stuff. Those that deal with your worth not financially but personally. Funny how, in my case, these two are joined in the hip. Nyeta, magkapatid sila. I lived in a vicious cyle of asking for a pittance. Taking whatever I can  get (maybe I should have checked that status in facebook) from people. relationships--which is why it has extended its octopus arms to my work. That's the bottomline. Having said that, I can't really tell the boss, "hey, do you know that two years ago I was making 18,000 pesos in a Makati firm and I thought it was okay?" or that "I gave birthday parties to friends who don't even go to mine" and of course the kick-ass of them all, "I used to drive from Alabang to Fairview to see someone who didn't know me the next morning." 

I don't think telling the boss the above-mentioned is wise. So I won't. Let him wonder why I was the way I was. It doesn't matter.

I only got what I asked for.

And besides, that is history that will never repeat.