A reader writes:

I work for a very small company with three full-time employees and my boss, who is the owner. My coworkers and I (who are all in our first professional jobs out of college) make reasonable salaries for the area, but receive no other benefits. One of my coworkers and I started around the same time and recently received raises at our two year anniversaries. These raises are standard and were outlined to us when we first started. Because the company rarely has had employees stay this long, the overhead of our salaries is higher than my boss has experienced before.

Here’s the problem: He complains CONSTANTLY about how much we cost him. He’ll remind us in emails or in person at least a few times a week how high overhead is. My coworker recently used several of her PTO days and he basically yelled at her that she should have used them before she received the raise. He recently emailed us both letting us know if we wanted to take any unpaid days off, that would be fine with him.

I might understand this behavior if the company was really struggling. However, I handle all the finances for the company and can see that the past two years have been the most profitable the company has ever been. In fact, much of this profitability can be directly tied back to mine and my coworker’s efforts.

To me this seems unprofessional and I find it completely demoralizing. It seems like he doesn’t appreciate our work but instead just looks at us as dollar signs. Most of the time he is a good person, but this has really started to bug me and I don’t want to continue to be reminded what I burden I am. However, I want to stay in this job for the next year as I need to be close to family members who are ill. Additionally, I recently have taken on more responsibilities that if I stay and continue to learn could open up a lot of doors professionally for me in the future. So what do I do in the meantime? Should my coworker and I tell him how these comments make us feel? Or should I grin and bear it for a year until I can move on?

It might be interesting to act as if you’re taking his comments very, very seriously. You could ask to meet with him and say something like, “You’ve been mentioning a lot lately how much my and Jane’s salaries cost the business. I’ve done some market research and know that we’re being paid well in line with the market for this kind of work — maybe even a bit under market since we don’t get benefits. Since we’re not overpaid, I’m concerned if there’s some other message here — is the business in trouble? Is everything okay?”

(And yes, you see the finances and know that things are fine — but it’s plausible that you’re concerned that he knows something you don’t, since otherwise his comments are inexplicable.)

I suspect you’ll get a cranky answer that doesn’t admit things are fine but instead grumbles about the strain of, you know, paying employees for their work.

At that point, you can say, “Assuming you agree that we’re being paid a fair market rate for our work, it’s really demoralizing to be told so frequently that we cost too much. I believe I’m being paid fairly so I don’t know how to respond when you talk about my salary. What are you looking for from me when you say those things?”

It’s possible that just calling out the behavior like this will get it to stop, or at least significantly lessen.

But if it doesn’t, then I would try to just look at him as an amusing caricature of a miserly industrialist, like a Mr. Burns or an Ebenezer Scrooge.

Also though … I am highly skeptical of any company that rarely has anyone stay even two years, and oh also happens to hire mainly people right out of college (who conveniently are the ones least likely to recognize and balk at terrible management practices), and doesn’t provide benefits (although it does sound like you get paid time off, so I assume that means no insurance — which is not good). Combine it with your boss’s absurd behavior, and I would seriously question how much you’re getting out of staying, and how many doors it’s really going to open in the future. I hear you that you want to stay in the area because of ill family members, but it’s worth thinking about whether there are other, healthier workplaces that would let you do that too.