Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

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Play it for me, baby.

As in love and work, you should ask, “Am I involved with a cheapskate?”

Ladies, Gentlemen and fellow visitors, Ann’s formula is proven—bar none.

Let’s start off with relationships, in the love kind. My No. 1 test to determine a cheapskate guy is whether he’ll shell out the $1 or so to get a baggage cart at the airport when there’s way too much stuff to carry.

I’ve dated millionaires who’d rather pinch and carry than slip George Washington into the dollar slot to release one of those nifty carts.

You might say, That’s how they became millionaires. But I don’t buy that reasoning—too logical.

Then, there’s the employer cheapskate. You’d think that with all the hours an employer expects you to put in plus your unconditional devotion and passion toward its mission, even if it is for profit, that you’d get free coffee in the employee cafe.

I’m talking small companies—a hundred employees or less, or bigger companies with field offices that size. For bigger companies, I’ll give them a break on supplying free coffee to the minions.

My last employer had the audacity to deduct—yes, voluntarily—$5 from my paycheck if I wanted to participate in the “cafe club,” which bought you a bad cup of coffee a day for a month.

You were on your own for milk. Moooo (but not sugar).

That’s also the same organization (wink, wink) that thought it could convince its employees that a 3 percent to 5 percent annual raise was for merit. With all its PhDs running around, you’d think they’d be smart enough to hark that it barely amounted to a COLA (cost of living adjustment).

Its annual review was also a joke, because I was told that you just needed to be average (read: code your annual performance reviews with “3s”) to succeed. Yah, I got a few 4s but still got the heave ho.

So, what is a generous employer, lover? In defining the latter, a generous lover is someone who adores you and whom you adore back. If soul goddess Aretha Franklin were to write a sequel to her hit song Respect, it would be Reciprocity.

Such a simple adaptation:

What you want
(oo) Baby, I got
(oo) What you need
(oo) Do you know I got it?
(oo) All I’m askin’
(oo) Is for a little reciprocity when you come home (just a little bit)
Hey baby (just a little bit) when you get home
(just a little bit) mister (just a little bit)

R-E-C-I-P-R-O-C-I-T-Y.

Find out what it means to me. Now, go ahead. Sock it to me.

As for what makes a generous employer?

R-E-C-I-P-R-O-C-I-T-Y.