This Is Uncomfortable September 5, 2024 Transcript

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<<sounds of a graduation>> 

Reema Khrais: On a Friday afternoon back in May, hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder in a packed stadium in Washington, DC. They were watching blue-robed students cross the stage to receive their diplomas from Howard University. Nikki Massie scanned the room looking for her youngest daughter. 

<<Nikki in grad tape: That might be her! I think it is her, yep! >>

<<Sounds from Howard Graduation>> 

Nikki Massie: Because it was such a big class, they’re just calling out these names in rapid succession, and so my phone is going, because I was like, I am not gonna miss this moment.

Reema: When Nikki’s daughter finally crossed the stage, she triumphantly held up her degree…

<<Tape from Nikki’s iphone video – screaming and celebrating as her daughter crosses the stage>> 

Nikki: We were going nuts. My brother was really going nuts. He’s just like yelling at the top of his lungs. 

Reema: That’s really sweet.

Nikki: Everyone was so proud. So I now have two kids through college, I’m so thankful.

Reema: Wow, that’s amazing. Congratulations. 

Nikki: Thank you, thank you so much. I’m giddy and proud, and proud of myself and of them. Now we’re this little family of college-educated women. And it wasn’t easy for any of us, not a single one of us. 

Reema: The last time I talked with Nikki was back in 2020, you might remember her story from our second season. She’s a listener – a single mom with two daughters – and at the time, she wrote to us about the sacrifices she was making to help pay for her children’s college. 

Nikki had struggled to pay for college herself and eventually dropped out. It took her more than a decade for her to get her degree. So it was important to her that she lessen the burden for her daughters. She’d promised herself things would be different for them. 

Nikki: And, that was like sort of the driving force for me. The drum beat. It might sound cheesy, but like, you know, sort of being like a cycle-breaker for, for lack of a better word. I didn’t want this cycle to repeat itself because I just, I knew where that led. I knew the kind of stress that it, it leads to.

Reema Khrais: Earlier this year, we found an email in our inbox from Nikki, sharing this happy update – that after making all these financial sacrifices for her kids, they’d graduated college. Her hard work paid off. 

And so at first, we thought we’d run her old episode again and include a short update. But as we kept reading her email, Nikki revealed more big news… She told us about an experience in her workplace that brought up all these questions for her: questions about her self-worth, about what it means to advocate for yourself, and it even made her rethink just how far a college degree can take you. 

Nikki: I have never questioned my salary for any job before. Ever. And I probably should have but I never have. And so it was just uncharted territory for me, and I didn’t know what was gonna happen.

Reema: I’m Reema Khrais, and welcome to This is Uncomfortable, a show from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it. College had long been Nikki’s north star. It shaped the financial decisions she made for herself. And for her kids. But this next chapter of Nikki’s story, is all about what happens when the progress you thought you’d made didn’t get you as far as you expected. The systems you can’t control. And why transparency matters. 

Reema: Walk me through when you realized that you were getting underpaid. How did that happen? 

Nikki: Sure. So my organization was still fully remote, everybody was fully remote. I was in my home office, and the human rights department decided to do a presentation… 

Reema: This was during the early pandemic days. Nikki, who’s in her late 40s, had been with this company for more than a decade. She worked as a senior manager for a non-profit in the DC area. This presentation she’s talking about was part of an all-staff meeting. 

Nikki: I’m an extrovert, and I was really suffering from not seeing people, so I was actually sort of like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, we’ve all got to be on camera, I’m gonna see people, you know…

Reema: She might be the first person I’ve met who looks forward to an all-staff. This one was kind of run-of-the-mill, a powerpoint going over the health of the company, who’s going, who’s coming, that kind of stuff. And then HR got to this presentation about salaries.

This is how Nikki remembers it: a slide flashed onto the screen. On it, were the salary ranges for each of the job categories at her organization. And each range had three points: Low. Medium. And high. As she made sense of the chart, she could feel her body heating up…

Nikki: The first thought was, “Oh hell no!”

Reema: She remembers seeing her salary – 75 thousand dollars – corresponding to the very bottom of her position’s salary range.

Nikki: It was like, it was a punch in the gut moment, I was, I, and I really, I had to make sure I was muted because I think I audibly went, “What the hell?” I make the lowest amount that I can make for my salary grade. How in the world did that happen?

Reema: And what was the highest amount? 

Nikki: I believe the highest amount was like 110 or 112 or something like that. 

Reema: Being at the bottom of a salary range typically means you have the least amount of skill and experience for that position. Nikki had been with the company for 12 years, and she’d been in that position for the last three. It didn’t feel good knowing that she was making the least amount possible. 

Nikki: They had never shown us this salary information before. Ever. I wanted some documentation so I just hurried up and you know pulled out my cell phone and I took a picture of the screen. I didn’t even care if anybody saw me taking a picture of the screen or was wondering what I was doing, because I was on camera.

Reema: After that slide, Nikki didn’t hear anything anyone else said in the meeting. They were like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon, everything was unintelligible. 

When you ask Nikki about her financial life, about what it was like raising two kids as a single mom, she’ll tell you she can’t remember a time when she didn’t feel stressed about money. 

Nikki: Because like, really and truly, I was getting no support for these children. So, you know, whether it be, you know, paying rent, or paying the gas and electric bill, or somebody needs a new pair of shoes, or “I need field trip money.” That was just like, life 24/7.

Reema: It was especially tough when her kids were young. That’s when she decided to return to college after she’d dropped out in her early 20s. It was a lot to juggle: the night classes, coordinating with babysitters, staying up late to finish homework. She was proud of herself when she finally graduated with an English degree. One of her first jobs was at this nonprofit. 

She loved their mission. Her colleagues felt like family. And before she knew it, more than a decade had passed. She’d moved up the ranks from a staff writer to a senior manager for social media and email marketing. And along the way, she’d collected bonuses and awards. 

Which is kinda why she had no reason to question her salary. When you’ve been at a company for so long, and you’re taking on new roles, your salary’s going up, it’s easy to trust that you’re being paid what you deserve. But what if she wasn’t? 

Nikki: Part of me was just, like, am I not doing a great job? Is this, like, a vote in their confidence in me? Like, what does this even mean that, that, you know, I make the absolute rock bottom that I can make, uh, for this position?

Reema: Usually the first thing you do when you feel pissed off at work is find someone you can vent to, someone who might be able to give you advice. But Nikki wasn’t really sure who to turn to. 

Nikki: the person that would have guided me would have been my mom, and she passed away in 2012. Um, she was the only person in my life that had sort of a professional position. I’m still like the only person in my close friends group who has a college degree and things like that. And I didn’t have a lot of close friends at work who, you know, and nobody was sharing their salaries at work. So yeah, I have people to talk it through about how I felt about it. I didn’t have people to talk it through and say, okay, well, here’s maybe what you should do next.

Reema: Like strategically?

Nikki: Yeah.

Reema: Hmm. Okay so then the meeting ends, and then what do you do? 

Nikki: So I kept coming around to that thought, is it me? Is it me? Is it me? But then like sort of my, my good sense kicked in, and it’s like, “You know, they’ve been giving you these, you know, performance bonuses, you’ve been getting all of these great compliments from leadership and your boss, so I, you know, it’s not you, but there’s something about this that’s funky, and you need to get to the bottom of this.” And one thing you should know about me is that I’m very non confrontational, so that caused anxiety, because I, I don’t like causing a stink about things…. but it was just like, I might, I might have to cause a stink about this.

Reema: That’s after the break. 

<BREAK>

Reema: Not long after the all-staff meeting, Nikki decided to talk with her supervisor about her salary. She was nervous. 

Nikki: It’s just like, is this gonna end up being one of those things where my job is really uncomfortable afterwards? Is there gonna be always this rift between us? I have no idea what’s about to happen. And when I get nervous and I have to deal with a difficult topic, I actually, like, make an outline of everything that I want to say so that I don’t forget things. [laughs]

Reema: Right, and did you rehearse it? 

Nikki: I didn’t rehearse it, but I did write out my points. I wanted to make the logical case and not necessarily the emotional case. Even though I feel like I was emotionally justified to feel insulted by my salary, I know that HR departments don’t run on emotion. 

Reema: She’s always felt fortunate to make a decent salary. But she could’ve also really used the extra money. Nikki hadn’t taken a proper vacation in years. There was a giant hole in her kitchen ceiling. She covered her fraying couches with blankets, and she owed the government more than 65-thousand dollars in student debt. If only she could include all of that in her talking points. 

When the meeting started, Nikki calmed her nerves and told her boss…

Nikki: “There’s something I need to talk to you about. I noticed that my salary is the actual lowest for my salary grade, and I wanted to talk to you about that because I just really, I don’t understand why that is.” Um, so she actually paused for a noticeable amount of time. And she said, um, “I didn’t notice that. I wasn’t paying attention to the numbers. Tell me more about that.” 

Reema: Nikki reminded her supervisor of her strengths: her innovative thinking, her leadership, all those improvements she made to their systems over the last three years. She says her supervisor listened, and she agreed that Nikki was right to have brought this up. It seemed like the meeting went well, now she just had to wait to see what came of it. 

I think a lot of us have experienced a version of what Nikki was going through. You know, realizing for the first time that you can – or maybe even should – be asking more of your employer. Nikki thought back to the last several years, replaying different moments in her head. Like when she got promotions, she didn’t realize that those were also opportunities for negotiation. 

Nikki: I thought I just sort of had to take it. It’s like, “Okay, you’re going to get this new job and here’s how much we’re going to pay you.” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll take it.”

Reema: The more time passed and the more she thought about it, the more Nikki could feel her anger hardening.

Nikki: I was angry at myself for not being, uh, well informed, but I was angrier at my organization. Cause it was just like, why, how does this happen? It’s like I never thought that, I know this sounds cheesy, but I just didn’t think that that sort of thing would ever happen to me or that I would deal with that. And up to that point I’d had sort of an idyllic view of the organization. I was like, we are family. We’re family. And I was like, you know, that, that was like sort of my very, you know, my very real cue of like, you know, your job is not your family, your job is not your friends. You can have friends who work at the same job as you, but that, that’s not necessarily your relationship to the organization. And I think that that felt like a little bit of a betrayal to me. 

Reema: And when you say that, you thought you would never have to deal with “that,” what do you mean by that? 

Nikki: Like having to deal with like, you know, I…  I’m trying to figure out how to word this because it is sort of a complicated thought. So, um, I think that I thought  that I was in a privileged position for a woman of color.

Reema: Mm 

Nikki: Cause, you know, here I am, I have this, you know, I have this college degree, I have a nice salary job, and I thought I’d like I thought that, you know, I had risen above all of that, and now I’m going to be successful, and it’s just like, you know, just not that scenario. I kept coming back to this concept of merit: it’s like you know, and thought that, you know, it would be a merit-based thing and that there wouldn’t be so many other factors defining how much I make.

Reema: We can’t confirm what other factors might’ve been at play…. But Nikki’s experience, as a Black, college-educated, single-mom, does sit at the intersection of some huge labor trends: Like we know Black women have the highest participation rate in the labor force, compared with other women in the U.S. And, in fact, about two thirds of those Black women are working moms who are the sole or equal earners in their households. Just like Nikki. But Black women tend to get paid less in the same jobs, even when you control for education. If you take a look at median annual earnings… for every dollar earned by white men, white women were paid 80 cents, and Black women were paid 66 cents. 

Nikki: I was scared to like, I didn’t want to bring that up in the talks with anybody about this though, because there’s always such a real possibility that somebody’s gonna quote unquote accuse you of playing the race card. 

Reema: Not long after, her supervisor brought her in for a meeting. Instead of a raise higher on the salary scale for her current job, they offered her a new position. Nikki told us it was a lot of what she was already doing, with the added responsibility of managing someone who’d work under her. But something was missing from the job description. 

Nikki: I noticed there wasn’t any sort of salary information on that, that proposed job description. So I asked about that. I said, well what’s the salary going to be for the job? And she asked me, Well, did you have a number in mind? 

Reema: Nikki was thinking 95,000 dollars. She says HR came back to her with 87. She accepted. But in the back of her mind, she kept thinking…

Nikki: If I was underpaid before, how do I know whether or not I’m being paid the correct amount now? And especially because I sort of got, like, negotiated down on that point. It was just like, I had no frame of reference. I’m like, did I get played? Maybe I just got played. Maybe I just agreed to a bad deal. I have no idea. It’s more money… And it’s like, you know, I, I was just very deeply uncomfortable with the thought of continuing to push this.

Reema: She felt let down by the process. But she stayed busy at work and her company returned to the office. Then one day, a little over a year later, Nikki was working at her cubicle when she says she got a tap on her shoulder. The vice president of the company wanted to see her. Nikki remembers walking in and sitting down facing the VP.

Nikki: He says, well, why do you think you’re here? I was just like, I don’t know. Why am I here? Um. And he’s like, you’re here because I have some good news for you. 

Reema: She was getting a raise. A big one. About a 20-thousand dollar bump. Her salary would now be 108-thousand dollars. 

Nikki: I was taken aback because I was just like, is this really happening? And I went, “wow!” Like twice, two wows.

Reema: Yeah. Yeah.

Nikki: I said, thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you for your kind words. And, and, and thank you. I appreciate that. It was like, I kept saying, it was very awkward.  

Reema: She wasn’t sure how to process it. Even in the middle of all these raises, she still felt like there was a lack of transparency. No recognition that she might have been underpaid… or what prompted this raise now. 

Nikki: I didn’t ask why, because that, in the moment, it felt like looking a gift horse in the mouth. So I didn’t say like, why am I getting this raise?  

Reema: Yeah. But in your mind, what did you think? 

Nikki: In my mind, I was just like, how did this happen? Like, it was just like, like, I was like, I better not like wake up and find out I was asleep or something like that. [laugh] And so, you know, I was really happy about it, but part me, part of me was, like, indignant. Like, yes, I’m happy about it, but I’m not going to show you I’m happy about it. I’m going to go home to my kids and my boyfriend and be happy about it. I called absolutely everybody. I like, I called my best friend… 

Reema: [laughter]

Nikki: I called my boyfriend. I called my kids. I’m like, “Guess what happened? Oh my gosh!” And my kids are like, “You’re rich now, Mom!”

Reema: But at the same time, Nikki couldn’t shake that doubt she was feeling. The way everything went down left a sour taste in her mouth. 

Nikki: It wasn’t, I didn’t think, “Oh you guys like me, you really like me!” Um it was more like, “This is probably what I should have been making the whole time. The trust I had in the organization was kind of gone. I don’t trust that I’m going to advance here the way that I would want to or need to. I think I want to start looking for another job.”

Reema: It might seem odd that Nikki decided to leave after getting offered more money than she’d ever made. But once doubt creeps in, it’s hard to rebuild trust. It’s like she spent years tending a garden, watering the plants each morning, pulling the weeds… thought she was building something really beautiful, and then she found out one day that the soil was tainted. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t. But no amount of shiny new tools or new lush plants can change the fact that she invested so much energy on a garden with questionable foundation. She could try to rebuild it. But why bother when there are so many other places where you can build something more fruitful? 

Just a few days into her job search, Nikki got a message from a recruiter on LinkedIn who told her about a position at another nonprofit. She read through the job description. It was a great match. 

Nikki: I clicked through the link, and I took a look at it, and it read like it was my job. 

Reema: It had been 14 years since her last job interview. But Nikki swiftly made her way through a screening with the recruiter. Then a first and a second interview… before she found herself on a final video call with a panel of the organization’s leaders. Nikki had all but got the job. Then they asked her, what’s your salary expectation?  

Nikki: I did have to practice that because it was like every time I said it, I would stutter. So I said it very confidently, “My salary expectation is 118 dollars.” And do you know what she said to me?

Reema: What did she say?

Nikki: She said, “Great. We’re gonna pay you 127.”

Reema: No!!

Nikki: And I was just like … oh my gosh!

Reema: What! And then you’re like, “No no just kidding, 150!” [laughs] Wow.

Nikki: Well part of me was wondering, if you knew that why did you ask me that question? 

Reema: Yeah.

Nikki: I thought I was going to say 118 and they were going to say a lower number, and then I was going to have to negotiate back up to a higher number. So it was like, if they’re saying 127, like what what what’s the right answer?

Reema: Nikki left the interview wondering, yet again, whether she’d undersold herself. Trying to name her salary felt like a question on a test that she didn’t know how to study for. But she was happy with the number, and excited for how she could grow in her career with this new position. She accepted the offer and has been working there for the last two years. 

Nikki’s in a new phase in her life – the kids are done with college, she’s making more money than she’s ever made – finally it feels like she can breathe a little. 

Nikki: It’s actually pretty exciting to think about, because now I’m sort of having thoughts like, hey, if I want to go on vacation I can do that! Or, uh…

Reema: Right.

Nikki: Things like that. Or if I want to buy some new clothes for, for the summer, I can do that, sorta thing. But at the same time not wanting to be, like, too wasteful. [laugh]

Reema: She and her children recently went to Universal Studios in Orlando, their first vacation in a long time. She’s also finally going to fix that hole in the kitchen ceiling. 

Thinking back to the first time I talked with Nikki, four years ago, I can hear just how much her thinking has shifted. Last time, she shared a story about the lengths she went to help pay for her children’s college, how she saw that as the path to success and security. But now because of her experience, she’s realizing that college can only take you so far…

Reema: As your children are getting started in their careers, what do you hope to tell them about how to think of their own value in the workplace? 

Nikki: I want them to realize that there’s this sort of this propensity that I have, and I feel like other people have this propensity, to just in general to lowball yourself or feel like you have to be the absolute expert at something before you can, uh, demand your worth from, from something. I feel like there’s, there’s not as big of a risk in taking a chance and just asking for what you want, as I seem to have perceived there being my whole life. And so, if you believe that you should be in a different place, you should go for it. 

Reema: Nikki says there are times when she wonders what would’ve happened if she took that risk herself when she was younger.

Nikki: If I had known earlier, like, to check and make sure that I’m making a fair amount and things like that, would, would, would that process have started even earlier in my life? Could I have spoken up earlier? Could I have realized more time to be making more income, and could my finances have been a little bit different based on that? Um, but I try not to dwell on it too much  because it’s just like it becomes too much to think about. [laugh]

Reema: Every now and then, I’ll come across these reports about how if you don’t negotiate your first salary you stand to lose an absurd amount of money, like half a million dollars by the time you’re 60 or whatever. There’s something about these stats that have always rubbed me the wrong way, the implication is that it’s our job to fix the pay gaps, not the company’s. But at the same time, it gets at that uncomfortable truth that Nikki discovered. Yeah, sure it shouldn’t be our job, but … it kind of is. That’s what Nikki tells her daughters: some employers will have your back, but you can’t count on it. Now that her children are adults, she calls herself their trusted advisor – someone who shares all the things she wishes someone had shared with her. 

Alright that’s all for our show this week. If you want to reach out with any thoughts about this episode, you can always email me and the team over at uncomfortable@marketplace.org. We’re hoping to share more stories next season about our relationship to work, so if you’re like Nikki, you’re a listener of the show and have a workplace story you want to share, please reach out — you can tell us about your experiences around pay, about how your relationship to work has changed over time, or how your work has changed you. Or also if you have a fun workplace romance story, definitely interested in hearing that. Again you can reach out to us at uncomfortable@marketplace.org. 

Also be sure to check out our weekly newsletter – always great recommendations in there for how to spend your time, things to read and watch and listen to. If you’re not signed up for that already, you can do that at marketplace.org/comfort. 

Marika Proctor: This episode was produced by me, Marika Proctor, and Reema Khrais. We wrote the script together. The episode got additional support from Alice Wilder, Caitlin Esch and Hannah Harris Green. Zoë Saunders is our senior producer. Our editor is Jasmine Romero. Sound design and audio engineering by Drew Jostad. Bridget Bodnar is Marketplace’s Director of Podcasts. Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital. Neal Scarbrough is Vice President and general manager of Marketplace. And our theme music is by Wonderly.

Reema: All right, I’ll catch you all next week.

Nikki: It was just like, I might have to cause a stink about this!