Rant N Rave: Noisy Neighbors and A Raise

Rant

Today’s rant comes to you cour­tesy of my love­ly neigh­bors below me. I’ve lived in this apart­ment for almost an entire year, and for the most part it’s been pret­ty good. Maybe some­one has a dog that JUST WON’T SHUT UP, or some­one else is a ter­ri­ble cook and can’t fig­ure out how to silence their smoke alarms. There’s also the typ­i­cal peo­ple who can’t be both­ered to pick up their dog’s crap from the com­mon grass areas despite tons of poop sta­tions all over. Ya know, stan­dard apart­ment stuff.

But aside from them, I’ve had a decent time liv­ing here (albeit kind of an expen­sive one).

Until now.

This week­end, I hit a break­ing point.

Appar­ent­ly, I have new neigh­bors. They must be new, because I’ve not had a prob­lem with them until recent­ly. Sure, there was what I referred to as the “8:50 no No NO NO” cho­rus, where their kid did­n’t want to go to bed. (who can blame him?) That was once a day, and unless I was in the sec­ond bed­room, I could­n’t hear it.

Unlike my new neigh­bors. They are recent immi­grants from Africa. I have no prob­lems with immi­grants– I’m no Don­ald Drumpf- and I only men­tion it because it’s incred­i­bly rel­e­vant to the sto­ry. They’re LOUD. They talk loud, laugh loud and take part in oth­er, ahem.… activ­i­ties loudly.

Sat­ur­day they threw a par­ty in which I assume they were watch­ing soc­cer, drink­ing, blast­ing music based on the cheers and groans I heard ema­nat­ing from the floor. Their music was so loud, I shaz­amed the song from my couch and my phone found it. (This is the song, if you’re at all curious.)

I tol­er­at­ed it for awhile until I real­ized I had to blast my TV just to hear a lit­tle bit of the show I was watch­ing. I was reluc­tant to do so, because I had to put on clothes appro­pri­ate for being out in pub­lic, brush my hair, and oh yeah, I hate con­fronta­tion. But I sucked it up and was amused their first reac­tion was “shh! Polizia! POLIZIA!?!” They turned down the noise slight­ly after my vis­it, enough that I could watch my show in rel­a­tive com­fort. They also qui­et­ed down when I stomped on the floor lat­er that night since I was going to bed.

All of this is just rein­forc­ing my deci­sion to buy a mul­ti­fam­i­ly prop­er­ty and move out of apart­ments for EVER (hope­ful­ly, maybe?). There’s just some­thing about being in close prox­im­i­ty to so many peo­ple that I have an issue with. But, at least I’m not sur­round­ed by chron­ic smok­ers at this place. So, I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Rave

While I might have my inner home sanc­tu­ary vio­lat­ed by a pletho­ra of loud, dis­cor­dant nois­es I can take solace in the fact that I’m now get­ting paid more to be mis­er­able! I recent­ly received my year­ly “com­pen­sa­tion adjust­ment”. Aka I got a raise! Now, I’m not talk­ing any­thing crazy, but 2.31% is noth­ing to sneeze at.

Since I start­ed with my com­pa­ny at the begin­ning of 2014, my total base salary has gone up almost 9%. That’s two year­ly rais­es and one bump when I changed posi­tions. Not ter­ri­ble, but also not super spectacular.

If I were to look at switch­ing com­pa­nies, I could prob­a­bly get at least a 10% raise, and prob­a­bly a 15% raise in one fell swoop. Get­ting rais­es is impor­tant since not only do you get more mon­ey to spend, you raise your salary thresh­old for future rais­es and posi­tions. If you’re curi­ous as to how to nego­ti­ate for big­ger rais­es and bet­ter ben­e­fits, I’d check out Ramit Sethi’s cours­es. They’re packed with great infor­ma­tion, use­ful tech­niques for nego­ti­a­tion and have helped a lot of peo­ple get more money.

Since my last rota­tion­al pro­gram (the job I have now) has an end date in Q4 this year, I think I’m going stay with this com­pa­ny and see what I can do here. I like work­ing for this com­pa­ny as we’re doing a lot of good around the world and have won awards for being among the most eth­i­cal com­pa­nies. If I stay in the same grade, I’ll prob­a­bly see some­where around a 4% raise. I’ll prob­a­bly also try to nego­ti­ate for some extra vaca­tion time, since I’m con­stant­ly using all of mine up far too quickly.

If I go up to the next grade, I’ll prob­a­bly get a 10% raise. This isn’t a num­ber I pulled out of my.….…. hat; it’s based on vague answers from grad­u­ates of the pro­gram I know. Depend­ing on the role, I might also ask for more vaca­tion, but I feel a raise of that size is already pret­ty fair and I don’t want to be seen as greedy.

 

How has your life been going? Do you have a rant or a rave to share?