Some of you probably remember my story about how, when I got my big raise a couple years ago (as a bribe to take back more hours), the figure that I named was agreed to so quickly and without argument from administration that I was like, damn, I shoulda asked for more. But it never occurred to me to do that. I named what I thought was "fair", what I thought my skill set was worth to them. It didn't occur to me until after that I should have asked for more than I thought I should get and let myself be bargained down. And on realising that, it occurred to me that most *men* would know that.
I'm reminded of this by an internet--I won't even say "acquaintance" because we've never corresponded--person who agreed to watch someone else's toddler fulltime in her home for $75 a week. What? As a point of reference, I was paying my mom $100 a week to watch D as a baby. And she was my mom. And this was over twenty years ago. I can't imagine anyone paying less than $175-200 a week for private fulltime babysitting in 2009, no matter where in this country they live. But this woman who agreed on the ridiculously low figure doesn't value her own time and own skills enough to ask for what she *should* get, nevermind above and beyond with room for haggling.
I see this in (female) massage therapists who set their own fees, too. Some may be undercharging because they honestly think that's all the market will bear, but a lot just undervalue themselves and their work. They think, oh, my overhead is low, so I should charge less than so and so down the street, even when their work is comparable to, or superior to, so and so. They look for reasons to discount their services, like, oh, this client really needs the work and maybe can't afford it, so I'll give him a deal. There's this great reluctance to say, yeah, I'm worth x, if x is more than a bare minimum.
I wonder if it's a generational thing, and the women a generation behind me are over this. But women my age, by and large, aren't. I see it over and over again, that reluctance to assign a monetary value to their time and knowledge. To say, yeah, I'm good, and you oughta be paying for that excellence. It may have something to do with the fact that so many women still spend so much time doing "free" work at home. I dunno. I'm just pondering.
xoxo
4 comments:
All true, though I have no idea what's to be done about it. I imagine sometimes it's from an over-valuing of "the other" in transactions, which may or may not be an evolutionary quirk to optimize mothering/nurturing instincts and skills. The solution, of course, is not to go all the way over the other way, as successful business relationships depend on value being received on *both* sides, and sometimes guys never realize this before it's too late. (I could imagine an alternate negotiation taking place somewhere around the same time as yours resulting in somebody being laid off today because their negotiated salary proved too high for the hospital to take anymore).
I think it's why guys have always felt it important to be the ones left to haggle with car salesmen.
Oh, absolutely.
Like the lady who's being screwed on the babysitting--there are excusing statements like, oh, the parents couldn't afford what any of the local daycares charge. You want to shake her and say, that's not *your* problem. And the parents are friends of a relative or relatives of a friend, something like that. You know what? *Still* not your problem. Paying your own bills, and not tying up 40+ hours of your week being paid less than $2 an hour, *that's* your problem.
It was even part of my letting myself be underpaid for so long. "Oh, but I like my job." "Oh, but I love my boss, and he's been so good to me and taught me so much." "Oh, but my patients/families are great." Oh, but.
I have caught myself doing this when negotiating the cost of a cleaning. If the person is a friend or friend of a friend, I tend to give them a lower price, and yes, because some cant afford it. Just this morning I was fighting with myself whether to let a pet sitting client know that his sons dog was also at the house-I was only getting paid for one dog. Hes a good client who is going through a rough time right now. *BUT* I also used my time and energy to feed and care for this other dog-without compensation. I finally just let him know I let the other dog out and fed him- he texted me back saying he wasnt aware the other dog was gonna be there and that it was okay to adjust the charges.
I do not know why I do this...sometimes, its because someone is a friend and its kind of a 'scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" thing, helping each other out. How do you balance that with not feeling like youre giving yourself away?
I have been bartering with a local car repair place-I clean to pay for some car repairs they helped me out with. When I was negotiating the price for my cleaning, the guy said to my first figure "I think youre selling yourself short" So I asked him what he thought was fair, and he said "we were paying this other lady $50 to clean." Which was more than I had come up with. So we agreed on that price. It works out to about $16/hr. Which is more than I make at the cleaning company.
I was just reading something the other day about barter, in a massage context. This woman wanted to barter with someone who did dog grooming, and her price for a massage and the other woman's price for a complete grooming were just about exactly the same.
Because the dog lady took 4 hours to do a grooming(really?? that seems excessive), she was like "does that mean I would need to give her four massages to be fair. The advice given to her was uniformly "No! Barter is always dollar for dollar." But that seems like *such* a woman thing to do, to consider you're going to give someone four massages because you're so concerned with not screwing them over.
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