How do you guys handle it when a relatively good employee asks for an outrageous raise? I just had a guy who is being paid $18/hour ask me to be paid $28/hour. He’s a decent worker, but really not particularly skilled at anything. I have much more skilled employees that make less than what he’s asking for. This person does mostly odd jobs throughout the business. He said he came up with that number because represents a 10% raise for each year he has been here, though the math clearly doesn’t work on that; he would be at less than $24/hour even if I had given him a 10% raise each year.
I agree he deserves a raise, but that amount is crazy. I can hire much more skilled and competent people at that rate. I’m somewhat indifferent to whether he stays or goes, but I don’t see him really quitting as he and my office manager are a couple, and they like to commute to work together. I can handle things if both of them quit. Life would be less fun for a bit, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t see any real scenario where they will be otherwise able to work together like they do now.
I had a similar situation last year. Because of the high inflation last year I gave everyone pretty substantial raises. One employee got a $3/hr raise from $25 to $28. She came to me the next week and told me her husband’s company would hire her for $35 hour (this is for general office/administrative work, so semi-skilled).
I called her bluff. I had checked the starting salary for office workers with a little experience seems to be around $20-22 in my HCOL area, so I knew that if she left I wouldn’t have trouble hiring someone.
She’s still here, still getting $28/hr.
One thing no one else seems to mention is that if you give one employee an extra large raise, word may get out and it will cause discontent among your other employees who earn less.