Materialism and negotiations

January 29th, 2024

I am no good at this game. I don't think I have the skills to come up on top in the game of taking care of myself from a purely materialistic standpoint. Maybe I just had no time to prepare myself, since it was a rather sudden situation. I was called by my manager for a meeting with the directing manager of the company I work for. It was about taking on some new responsibilities and being compensated for them. Those new responsibilities are nothing new. I’ve been doing them already since early December when my co-worker went on extended medical leave. It was mentioned by my manager that something extra was coming my way, and today we sat down to iron out the details. In the end, I got what I think is fair, but I was asking for more — and was too easily talked down by my manager and the DM. And I too readily accepted what they offered for my renegotiated contract. I think I should be happy with what I got, especially in the still violent and unpredictable economy as it is today. I think I am a little happy about that, but there is still some disillusionment. I think I should have held more firmly for more, especially since I was the one with the upper hand — there is nobody at my place of work who could do what I am doing now — holding one and a half of the position at my workplace and making it work smoothly. I wonder why those negotiations today went the way it happened. Sometimes I feel like I should be more in-your-face vocal about my skills and my work ethic and the work I do — and be more demanding of my material compensation. I cannot really complain about my economic standing, but it seems that I eschew being in a way that might appear greedy. And I still don't know why that is.