Asking for a Raise

So I've got a job, and I hate working but this one is tolerable and I actually give it slightly more effort than my other jobs which I was always fired from either for defiance or heinous acts of apathy. Now this job pays me enough to live and the people are very nice. Needless to say it's not a corporate outpost but a fancy restaurant and inn which I highly recommend to anyone who should come to Luray Virginia with a few thousand dollars to spare. I do the grounds keeping there and it's very tolerable work but recently I've been considering asking for a raise. A time honored tradition as old as capitalism that I now think I deserve. Or rather I guess I do, I might not I don't know but somehow I really don't want to ask. Why not? Because there are so many scenarios. Just to clarify I'll present them all here.

Scenario 1: Death

Me: hey ummm boss , you think I could get a raise, you know I always help out and stuff and no one's been eaten by that South American man trap plant ever since I started watering it lately.
Boss: That's a pot of Petunias Jarret it never did eat anyone....
Me: Well they're still pretty dangerous...
Boss: You know you're a horrible waste of payroll as well as oxygen, DIEEE!!!
Me: No it is you who shall die!
( Anime style fight follows with one or both dieing, and if I survive...)

Scenario 2: Fired and imprisoned for boss' murder in the duel.

Cop: Come down from that bed and breakfast with your hands behind your head, drop the sword!
Me: Never! You'll not take me alive I will accept death before dishonor for that is the way of the samurai!
Cop: No! That's not the answer! You've got a lot to live for like prison and writing about how you slew your boss in a bloody fight to the death on a resume at Taco Bell!
Me: I must die! For my honor!
( I fall upon my own sword and then my family and that of my manager come out and make peace as the cop shakes his head and the prince comes out to do the final soliloquy )

Scenario 3: Getting fired but not having to fight for my life.

Me: So it's your wife's birthday today, well you know you're required to grant a favor on the day of your wife's birthday right?
Boss: No I'm not a mobster and even if I was you're thinking of daughter's wedding, not wife's birthday!
Me: Of course you're not a mobster, that's why it applies, mobsters do the wedding thing. However the owners of expensive hotels are required to grant favors on the day of their wife or significant other's birthday. Interestingly enough a moil is required to grant a free circumcision on the day of his son's baptism as well.
Boss: But a moil wouldn't...
Me: Hey, hey I don't make the rules and I don't try to live by them but you should.
Boss: ... Pease leave and never ever come back.

Scenario 4: Rather than a dollar raise he just gives me a half a cent raise and tells me to mow the lawn though I've never had to do that before so it'd be kind of strange.

Me: Hey can I have a raise?
Boss: Sure I'll give you a half a cent an hour raise!
Me: I was hoping for something a little more, you know, substantial...
Boss: Like what? A penny? A nickel perhaps? Well I don't know how you do things in Slovenia or where ever but here in America we don't just give huge raises for no reason you have to do something really great! That's capitalism for you, comrade!
Me: First of all I'm not a communist I'm an anarchist and remember the time I saved everyone from that man eating plant?
Boss: You mean the non-man eating petunia?
Me: Yeah whatever...
Boss: So do you want the raise or not?
Me: Sure, sure...
Boss: Now go mow the lawn!

Scenario 5: My boss accepts but I get hit by a van

Me: So howabout that raise? ( ZOOOM )
Boss: Sure, seven bucks an hour sounds fair. ( FYUUM )
Me: Great. So why are we having this conversation on the town's main thoroughfare? ( ZIP )
Boss: Fucked if I know, hey look out! (THUD)
Me: Aw crud, I'm just like Stephen King only minus the ability to sell a piece of paper with my feces smeared on it to form letters to a major publisher for millions of dollars... But I got a raise!

Scenario 6: My boss accepts and nothing weird happens... Except he's dressed as a priest!!!

Me: Hey padre, can I have a raise?
Boss dressed as a catholic priest: Certainly my son.
Me: Ok -sits around-
Boss: Shouldn't you be working?
Me: Yeah but I'm busy having a meeting with my superior, I told one Ursula to hold all my calls.
Boss: You're a groundskeeper...
Me: So? I still might get calls...
Boss: Of what nature?
Me: I don't know, people commenting on the grounds?
Boss: ( Disbelievingly, imagine him waving a dead parrot as he says this ) Commenting on the grounds?
Me: They might have good things to say about my work you never know.
Boss: How could they possibly say good things about your groundskeeping when you're in here waiting for calls that will never come instead of keeping the grounds!?
Me: I got a call last week.
Boss: About the grounds?
Me: No it was just my friend asking if I needed a ride home.
Boss: I see.
Ursula: Mr. H. you got a call, it's your butt doctor he says it's urgent!
Boss: Who the devil is that?
Me: That's my secretary, I'm going to have to talk to you later this sounds important. (to Ursula) Hold all my calls, I think this may take a while.
Ursula: Sure thing Mr. H!
Boss: .

So you see, getting a raise is a difficult and delicate process which I don't intend to embark upon because none of these prospective outcomes look to be all that great. I may just be a coward or I may just be afraid of losing my job and becoming a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel but who cares! I've got a clean bill of health from my butt doctor and a hot secretary named Ursula, life is good!

And if you thought I was going to do something with the whole priest gag you're sick, sick, sick! Catholic priests have been getting a bad rap for what they do to young men and I want it to stop. Just because there may be slight differences in the way they treat men from women, especially very young men, does not mean they should be persecuted and made the butt of jokes! I'm sure young males are perfectly happy with what they do for catholic priests and what they are paid for it. However if for some reason the young man does request a raise for being the altar boy I am sure he would receive it readily so stop all the bloody jokes about catholic clergy being cheep! I'm tired of people saying "Oooh that father O'Connor is screwing little Joey ... out of several dollars a day." It has to stop! There is nothing wrong with the way catholic priests pay their help and I am sure that the disparity in pay between altar boys and altar girls is only due to the glass ceiling we Americans all know and love and not to any particular preference.

L&E

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