Emails are hard

I didn’t send that email this morning after all… I felt too stressed about it. I’ve had a week off, it’s really hot and I haven’t slept well, and I did a lot of running last week. The thought of having to spend all day working was bad enough, without sending it and then having to deal with the outcome, so I just didn’t.

But I told my mum and she got a bit grumpy with me. I’d already talked about it with her and she’d suggested some wording. She thinks I should be hassling them and that it’s pretty bad I’ve been here for a year and a half without a pay rise. She’s right…

I checked my offer letter and contract yesterday and it’s not quite so clear as I thought. I was definitely told verbally at the interview that I’d have a review at six months then annually thereafter. But the offer letter actually says my first review will be “scheduled after six months from my start date”, which is the same words but arranged in such an order as to have no meaning. The word “after” makes for awkward English and makes the timescale completely unbounded. It’s obvious what I’m supposed to understand from it, but it’s not obvious what their intention was in writing it. Is it just clumsy phrasing or do they think they’re being clever? Probably the former, but the fact they haven’t delivered on it makes me wonder.

I chickened out of dealing with it today but I did send the email before I logged off, so it’s done. In the end I revised it to be more simple. I just said “It was my understanding that blah blah blah….did I misunderstand this?”. Which is just as effective, I suppose.