Company Policy

I talked to my HR Manager today and left with both a clear understanding of the process involved with getting a pay raise and a confusion on a company policy.

The pay raise policy makes sense. There are several contributing factors that determine if a worker gets a raise, such as economic needs and if the worker relies only on this job to make a living. My school leave requests caused me to be bumped to the back of the line (which is making me wonder what would have happened now if I didn't flag them about that starting pay increase that happened last year and I was being paid $6/hour instead of what I'm being paid now).

Another reason is budget. If the theatre is making money and they are doing what they are suppose to, naturally raises will occur. If not, then no matter how well of a worker you are, they simply cannot afford to give you a pay raise.

Again, all this makes sense. Even though I do have my reservation about the movie theatre not making any money.

What confuses me is the company policy on employee reviews. The policy is that there is no policy. They are not required to do reviews by any policy or even by law from what I was told. So why do them at all? It is to make sure the employee pool is working as efficiently as humanly possible. If anything, it is for the theatre's benefit.

They are also not required to show me my employee review. The corporate big wigs would like it if they would, hence the line where I am suppose to sign it saying that saw and agree to the document, but they do not require in either company policy or by law to sit me down and show it to me. To do so is a courtesy to me on behalf of the management team.

It was also disclosed to me that because of my school leave requests, there have been talks as to even if I should get a review for the time I worked for them. Their reasoning is because they cannot foresee my employment loyalty. They have had a history of workers going on school leave only to say halfway through the semester that they are not coming back. This means that doing an employee review would be a waste of time. The double-edge sword to this is the fact that they don't know if I'll be back, so they draw one up anyway just in case I do return. And again, they draw it up so that they can figure out how efficiently the employees are working.

Bottom line is that there is no demand for employee reviews let alone a requirement. I was given the impression that the only reason they even do them is to make those in positions above the theatre's management team look good to the District Manager. Quantity of labor rather than quality, for lack of a better phrase to use.

This is the part that confuses me. Not only was I not shown my review, because it is not required, but I'm not even required to have one in the first place? All it is used for is to make my managers look good for their managers because they did a little extra paperwork? And they don't even need me to sign it to show that they went the extra mile and sat me down in front of it explaining it to me?

If this is how the corporate world works, then I'm glad my life goal is to be in a position where all I can do all day is what I love to do: create.