0:06

On a Friday afternoon back in May, hundreds

0:08

of people stood shoulder to shoulder in a

0:11

packed stadium in Washington, D.C. They

0:13

were watching blue-robed students cross the stage

0:15

to receive their diplomas from Howard University.

0:19

Nikki Massey scanned the room, looking for

0:21

her youngest daughter. Because

0:26

it was such a big class, they're just calling out

0:28

these names in rapid succession. So my phone is

0:30

going because I was like, I am not going

0:32

to miss this moment. When

0:34

Nikki's daughter finally crossed the stage, she

0:37

triumphantly held up her degree. Sorry,

0:39

I didn't have a date, baby! We

0:42

were going nuts. Yeah, my brother

0:44

was really going nuts. He's just

0:46

yelling at the top of his lungs.

0:49

That's really sweet. Everybody's so

0:51

proud. So I now have two kids

0:54

through college. I'm so thankful. Wow,

0:56

that's amazing. Congratulations.

0:59

Thank you so much.

1:01

I'm giddy and proud and proud

1:03

of myself and proud of them.

1:07

Now we're this little family of college-educated

1:09

women, and it wasn't easy for any

1:11

of us, not a single one of

1:13

us. The last time I talked

1:15

with Nikki was back in 2020. You

1:17

might remember her story from our second season. She's

1:20

a listener, a single mom with two daughters. And

1:23

at the time, she wrote to us about the

1:25

sacrifices she was making to help pay for her

1:27

children's college. Nikki had struggled

1:29

to pay for college herself and eventually dropped

1:31

out. It took her more than a decade for

1:33

her to get her degree. So it

1:35

was important to her that she lessen the burden for her

1:37

daughters. She'd promised herself things

1:39

would be different for them. And

1:42

that was sort of the driving force

1:44

for me, the drum beat. It

1:46

might sound cheesy, but sort of being

1:49

a cycle breaker, for

1:51

lack of a better word. I didn't want

1:53

this cycle to repeat itself because I knew

1:56

where that led. I knew the kind of stress that

1:58

it leads to. Earlier

2:00

this year, we found an email in our

2:03

inbox from Nikki, sharing this happy update, that

2:05

after making all these financial sacrifices for her

2:07

kids, they'd graduated college. Her

2:09

hard work paid off. And

2:11

so at first, we thought we'd run her old episode

2:14

again and include a short update. But

2:16

as we kept reading her email, Nikki

2:18

revealed more big news. She

2:20

told us about an experience in her workplace that

2:22

brought up all these questions for her. Questions

2:25

about her self-worth, about what it means to

2:27

advocate for yourself, and it even made her

2:30

rethink just how far a college degree can

2:32

take you. I have never

2:34

questioned my salary on any job before,

2:36

ever. And I probably should have, but

2:39

I never have. And

2:41

so it was just uncharted territory for me, and

2:43

I didn't know what was going to happen. I'm

2:50

Rima Khres, and welcome to This is Uncomfortable,

2:52

a show for Marketplace about life and how

2:54

money messes with it. Which

2:57

had long been Nikki's North Star. It

2:59

shaped the financial decisions she made for herself

3:01

and for her kids. But

3:03

this next chapter of Nikki's story is all

3:06

about what happens when the progress you thought

3:08

you'd made didn't get you as far as

3:10

you expected. The systems you

3:12

can't control. And why

3:14

transparency matters. Walk

3:20

me through when you realized that

3:24

you were getting underpaid. How did

3:26

that happen? Sure. So

3:29

my organization was still fully

3:31

remote. Everybody was fully remote.

3:33

I was in my home office, and

3:36

the human resources department decided to

3:38

do a presentation. This

3:40

was during the early pandemic days. Nikki, who's in

3:42

her late 40s, had been with this company for

3:45

more than a decade. She worked

3:47

as a senior manager for a nonprofit in the

3:49

DC area. This presentation she's

3:51

talking about was part of an all-staff meeting.

3:54

I'm an extrovert, and I was really suffering from

3:56

not seeing people. So I was actually sort of

3:58

like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know. We've

4:00

all got to be on camera. I'm going to

4:02

see people, you know. She might be the first

4:04

person I've met who looks forward to an all-staff.

4:07

This one was kind of run-of-the-mill, a PowerPoint going

4:09

over the health of the company. Who's going, who's

4:11

coming, that kind of stuff. And

4:14

then HR got to this presentation about

4:16

salaries. This

4:19

is how Nicki remembers it. A slide

4:21

flashed onto the screen. On it

4:23

were the salary ranges for each of the job

4:25

categories at her organization. And each

4:27

range had three points, low, medium,

4:29

and high. As she

4:32

made sense of the chart, she could feel her body

4:34

heating up. The first thought was, oh,

4:36

hell no. She remembers

4:38

seeing her salary, $75,000, corresponding

4:41

to the very bottom of her

4:43

position's salary range. It was a

4:46

punch in the gut moment. And I really,

4:48

I had to make sure I was muted because I think

4:50

I audibly went, what the hell? I

4:52

make the lowest amount that I can make for

4:55

my salary grade. How in

4:57

the world did that happen? And

5:00

what was the highest amount? I

5:02

believe the highest amount was like maybe 110 or 112 or

5:05

something like that. Being

5:08

at the bottom of a salary range typically means

5:10

you have the least amount of skill and experience

5:12

for that position. Nicki had been

5:14

with the company for 12 years, and she'd

5:16

been in that position for the last three. It

5:19

didn't feel good knowing that she was making the

5:21

least amount possible. They had never

5:23

shown us the salary information before, ever.

5:26

I wanted some documentation, so I just hurried up and

5:28

I pulled out my cell phone and I took a

5:30

picture of the screen. I didn't even care

5:32

if anybody saw me taking a picture of the screen or was

5:34

wondering what I was doing because I was on camera. After

5:38

that slide, Nicki didn't hear anything anyone else

5:40

said in that meeting. They were

5:42

like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Everything

5:45

was unintelligible. When

5:52

you ask Nicki about her financial life, about what

5:54

it was like raising two kids as a single

5:56

mom, she'll tell you that she can't

5:58

remember a time when she didn't feel stressed. Not

10:02

long after the all

10:04

staff meeting, Nikki decided

10:06

to talk with her

10:09

supervisor about her salary.

10:12

She was nervous. I was just like,

10:14

is this going to end up being one of

10:16

those things where my job is really uncomfortable afterwards?

10:18

Is there going to be always this rift between

10:21

a, I have no idea what's about to happen.

10:24

And when I get nervous and I have to deal

10:26

with a difficult topic, I actually like make an outline

10:28

of everything that I want to say so that I

10:30

don't forget things. And did

10:32

you rehearse it? I

10:34

didn't rehearse it, but I did write out my points.

10:37

I wanted to make the

10:39

logical case and not necessarily the

10:41

emotional case, even though I feel

10:43

like I was emotionally justified to

10:45

feel insulted by my

10:47

salary. I know that, you know, HR

10:49

departments don't run on emotion. She's

10:52

always felt fortunate to make a decent salary, but

10:55

she could have also really used the extra money.

10:57

Nikki hadn't taken a proper vacation in years.

10:59

There was a giant hole in her kitchen

11:01

ceiling. She covered her Frank couches

11:04

with blankets and she owed the government more

11:06

than $65,000 in

11:08

student debt. If only she could

11:10

include all of that in her talking points. When

11:13

the meeting started, Nikki calmed her nerves and

11:15

told her boss, there's something I need

11:18

to talk to you about. I

11:20

noticed that my salary is

11:22

the actual lowest for my

11:24

salary grade. And I

11:26

wanted to talk to you about that because I

11:28

just really, I don't understand why that is. And

11:32

so she actually paused for a noticeable

11:34

amount of time. And

11:37

she said, I didn't

11:40

notice that. I wasn't

11:42

paying attention to the numbers. Tell me more

11:44

about that. Nikki

11:47

reminded her supervisor of her strengths, her innovative

11:49

thinking, her leadership, all those improvements she'd made

11:51

to their systems over the last three years.

11:54

She says her supervisor listened and

11:57

she agreed that Nikki was right to have brought this up.

20:00

Niki swiftly made her way through screening with

20:02

the recruiter, then a first and a second

20:04

interview before she found herself on the final

20:06

video call with a panel of the organization's

20:08

leaders. Niki had all but got the

20:10

job. Then they asked her, what's

20:13

your salary expectation? I did

20:15

have to practice that because it was like every time

20:17

I said it, I would stutter. So

20:20

I said it very confidently. I said, my

20:22

salary expectation is $118. And

20:25

do you know what she said to me? What did

20:27

she say? She

20:29

said, great, we're

20:31

going to pay you $127. No.

20:36

And I was just like, oh

20:39

my gosh. What? And then you're like, no, no, no,

20:41

just kidding. Well,

20:43

part of me was wondering like, why, if you

20:46

knew that, why, why, why did you ask me

20:48

that question? I thought I was going

20:50

to say $118 and they were going to say a lower

20:52

number and then I was going to have to negotiate back

20:54

up to a higher number. So it was like, if

20:57

they're saying $127, like what's,

20:59

what's, what's the right answer?

21:03

Niki left the interview wondering yet again

21:05

whether she'd undersold herself. Trying

21:08

to name her salary felt like a question on a test

21:10

that she didn't know how to study for. But

21:12

she was happy with the number and excited for how

21:15

she could grow in her career with this new position.

21:18

She accepted the offer. She's been

21:20

working there for the last two years. Niki's

21:26

in a new phase in her life. The kids

21:28

are done with college. She's making more money than

21:30

she's ever made. Finally, it feels

21:33

like she can breathe a little. It's

21:35

actually pretty exciting to think about because now I'm sort

21:37

of having thoughts like, hey, if I want to go

21:39

on vacation, I can do that. Right.

21:42

Things like that. Or

21:44

if I want to buy some new clothes for

21:46

the summer, I can do that sort of thing.

21:50

But at the same time, not wanting to be

21:52

like too wasteful. She

21:55

and her children recently went to Universal Studios

21:57

in Orlando, their first vacation in a long

21:59

time. She's also finally going

22:01

to fix that hole in the kitchen ceiling. Thinking

22:05

back to the last time I talked with Nikki four years

22:07

ago, I can hear just how much

22:09

her thinking has shifted. Like last

22:12

time she shared a story about the lengths she

22:14

went to help pay for her children's college, how

22:16

she saw that as the path to success and

22:18

security. But now because

22:20

of her experience, she's realizing that college can

22:22

only take you so far. As

22:26

your children are getting started in their

22:28

careers, what

22:30

do you hope to tell them about how to

22:32

think of their own value in the workplace? I

22:37

want them to

22:40

realize that there's this sort

22:42

of this propensity that I

22:44

have. And I feel

22:47

like other people have this propensity to just

22:49

in general lowball yourself or feel like you

22:51

have to be the absolute expert at something

22:53

before you can demand

22:55

your worth from something. I

22:58

feel like there's not as big

23:00

of a risk in taking a chance and

23:02

just asking for what you want as

23:05

I seem to have perceived there being

23:07

my whole life. And so if

23:10

you believe that you should be in

23:12

a different place, you should go for

23:14

it. Nikki

23:16

says there are times when she wonders what would

23:18

have happened if she took that risk herself when

23:20

she was younger. If I

23:22

had known earlier, like to check and make sure

23:25

that I'm making a fair amount and things like

23:27

that, would that process have started even earlier in

23:29

my life? Could I have spoken up earlier? Could

23:31

I have realized more time to be

23:34

making more income and could my

23:36

finances have been a little bit

23:38

different based on that? But

23:43

I try not to dwell on it too much because it's

23:45

just like it becomes too much to think about. Every

23:51

now and then, I'll come across these reports about

23:53

how if you don't negotiate your first salary, you

23:55

stand to lose an absurd amount of money, like

23:57

half a million dollars by the time you're 60

23:59

years. or whatever. There's

24:01

something about these stats that have always rubbed me the wrong

24:03

way. The implication is that it's

24:05

our job to fix the pay gaps, not the

24:08

company's. But at

24:10

the same time, it gets at that uncomfortable

24:12

truth that Nikki discovered. Yeah,

24:14

sure, it shouldn't be our job, but it

24:16

kind of is. That's

24:18

what Nikki tells her daughters. Some

24:21

employers will have your back, but

24:23

you can't count on it. Now

24:25

that her children are adults, she calls

24:28

herself their trusted advisor, someone

24:30

who shares all the things she wishes

24:32

someone had shared with her. All

24:55

right, that is all for our show this week.

24:57

If you want to reach out with any thoughts

24:59

about this episode, you can always email me and

25:01

the team over at uncomfortable at marketplace.org. We're

25:04

hoping to share more stories next season about

25:06

our relationship to work. So if

25:08

you're like Nikki, you're a listener of the show

25:10

and have a workplace story that you want to

25:12

share, please reach out. You can tell us about

25:15

your experiences around pay or about how

25:17

your relationship to work has changed over time or

25:19

how maybe your work has changed you. Or

25:22

also if you have a fun workplace romance

25:24

story, definitely interested in hearing that. Again,

25:26

you can reach out to us at

25:29

uncomfortable at marketplace.org. Also

25:31

be sure to check out our weekly newsletter, always

25:34

great recommendations in there for how to spend your time,

25:36

things to read and watch and listen to. If

25:39

you're not signed up for that already,

25:41

you can do that at marketplace.org/comfort. This

25:45

episode was produced by me, Marika

25:47

Proctor and Urimah Leis.

25:50

We wrote the script together. The

25:52

episode got additional support from

25:54

Alice Wilder, Caitlin Esch and

25:56

Hannah Harris Green. Zoe

25:59

Saunders is our series.