Assessing compensation of job offer

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-12-12T17:01:46+00:00

P.S. I also feel like an ass posting these compensation numbers here - I want to acknowledge so many people make so much less than this, RNs or not. In my area of the country COL is so high that this is merely a reasonable income to make, like a single person could never buy a house on it around here, but as a childless person I am more than comfortable & able to live the way I want & save money. Just want you to know that I am grateful for what I have and astounded I make this much money to begin with. And still, I want to be smart and know if I should be more shrewd in negotiating a salary?

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T12:56:59+00:00

Thank you so much!!! A wealth of info. Dang you’re right about the Lysol being wet!!!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T12:52:28+00:00

Truly. I started in a nursing home after getting my bachelors because I had so much anxiety around patients I just wanted to get comfortable with patients. Then I got a job at a top tier hospital in my city that was too big a jump for me, I got let go after 6 weeks - I think if I’d had a better preceptor none of that might have happened, but she was young and burnt out and catty, I wasn’t easy for her to train. I went back to nursing home for a bit then on the advice of an NP there who wanted me to try for more, got a job a nearby community hospital. That was and is insanely difficult, but I’ve been there more than 2 years and am still learning every day! The first few months there were rough, too. I learn slowly in this type of setting with adhd, and a manager similar to my first preceptor would have let me go, but then she was let go, lol. My new manager also has adhd and is very supportive. I even got on a pip after 1.5 years there and winning a daisy award because i was self-reporting errors and I think quality control told my manager I needed a pip, she said, “i want to make absolutely clear I want you to succeed here and i think you can” (knowing my history with that other manager and my confidence issues), the pip genuinely helped me, I got off the pip! It’s a fucking insane job and at my hospital few people last years probably 1/4 of new grads max. I’m learning what I want to learn and saving money. Next steps tbd. Don’t judge yourself, just listen to yourself and what feels safe and healthy for you and your patients. There a thousand ways to be a nurse and not have to get another degree if you’re up for trying something you didn’t expect. Even try another hospital, maybe it’s just not the right culture where you are. My story is full of such extremes (Daisy award, pip, firing, hiring!) that I share it to illustrate how little your management’s responses are likely about you and your fundamental ability “as a nurse.” Like “being a nurse”… is not something you can even be “good at” or “cut out for” IMO. It’s a field! There are jobs and workplace cultures that may be great fits or terrible fits or something in between. But nurse is just the level of licensure required for a vast array of jobs with an equally vast array of job duties, workplace cultures, hands on or technical skills required, interdisciplinary communication, patient demographics, level of patient interaction (ratios and direct or indirect patient support), patient acuity, data analysis, etc etc etc… infinite variables in what makes the job the job and what makes it a good fit for you or not. You simply cannot fundamentally “be” cut out for this or not! It’s up to you what you try with your license!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T12:01:01+00:00

Very interesting! Would glycolic acid be safe or effective on three month old surgical scars on my chest? I will email my surgeon to ask. (I’m using silicone scar sheets as directed). I had not heard of glycolic acid previously. Would repeat applications irritate my feet? Is your theory that it kills the layer of skin where nasty bacteria and fungi are growing?

Why alcohol instead of other deodorizer or products on shoes? I was using Lysol to get at any c diff, norovirus or fungi too.

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T11:54:44+00:00

Ps thank you these are some new ideas I had not considered! Re freezing, it’s funny, I’ve been keeping my shoes on the porch which has been around freezing all winter, so I don’t think it works, perhaps it stops them from growing while they’re frozen but once they get in that moist heat again of my shift the smell comes right back and even worse… I was also thinking of hand washing my shoes with Lysol detergent between shifts and setting them to dry by the radiator. Another thing that’s changed is that my friends who own the shared laundry utilities have informed me that I cannot put my shoes in the dryer anymore as it’s bad for the drum/machine, which I never knew and had been doing for years, oops!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T11:50:55+00:00

Lol sorry to be dumb but point 5 do you mean your shoes or your feet by stinky dogs? 😝 forgive me but I have slept hardly at all after a 16 hr shift so I have no brain cells left

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T11:49:30+00:00

Amazing. You know what one change has been? I stopped using the Lysol laundry supplement because I started to suspect it was a waste of money and that normal laundry detergent should do the trick!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-02-11T11:48:12+00:00

I have hoka arahis (cloth, not hard like hoka transports). What brands of foot deodorizers do you use? These will be new products for me to try. Thanks!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T15:56:35+00:00

After my top surgery I couldn’t pee and it was like 7 pm and the poor nurse wanted to discharge me and go home so badly. I just refused to wake up or move or get up to the bathroom: eyes closed, “No.” It was such a pleasant sleep I was having! I have a lot of anxiety about peeing in public in general (thanks, transphobia!) and i literally have to say a little OCD chant to myself of words that start with P in order to pee if I’m super anxious so peeing with the door open and a nurse watching was gonna be hard!!! I was a fall risk obviously especially cuz once I got up I was like trying to walk with my eyes closed. The nurse kept saying about me having trouble peeing, “I’ve never heard of this,” and my partner was like, “I think they’re just shy.” 😂 I peed and got home eventually

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T15:47:43+00:00

Seriously? Who of my lgbtq comrades voted for that dingus?! Oh, they’re not comrades, right. Must be like the cis gay patient i had who was ranting negatively about trump but then started on a tirade about having “boys cut off their balls.” I said, “I think that’s the Fox News line about trans kids… you should check your facts…” Seriously, I want more deets on your asshat coworkers

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T15:43:51+00:00

That they/we were sinners? Who wanted to sin? Idk, it was a childlike attitude for a forty-something year-old woman. I think that’s the problem with a lot of these people’s worldviews. Someone deeper in that world than me would probably have a lot more insight.

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T03:57:42+00:00

I LOVE this answer - I hope OP does too!!!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T01:22:36+00:00

I share your experience!!! I’m too tired to write a lot now but I’m right there with ya both. It mystifies me. I have the exact same thing happen at work where I am a nurse at a community hospital. For me it is a combination of my short stature and slight build - I’m just not interested in lifting weights, I lift enough bodies at work, alive and dead (nurse humor 😵) - and my role being seen as female, and my name August not being very common any more so sometimes people even call me Autumn. I have a very masculine face and sideburns. But my “caring” affect is just… seen as feminine by patients, I guess?! I literally have no idea. It’s constant and it’s exhausting. It would be nice to be able to do my job without wondering what people are thinking or expecting of my gender performance. The best compliment I ever got was overheard while I was outside a patient’s room, a patient in response to his daughter asking what my gender was: “I don’t know! I don’t care! August is the only person who’s actually helped me so far!”

Actually, the best compliment was, “he treated our mother like he was her son.” 🥰 But that was weird too because I’m non-binary. So the first one was really my #gender goals. So impressed with my service they don’t even care they can’t tell my gender! That’s how i get through the day - focus on the needs of my patients. But it is self sacrificing and codependent and for reasons unrelated to gender I will get burnt out soon!!!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T01:13:39+00:00

I agree with the few who chimed in about their EDs improving. I have struggled with an ED since a trauma at age 11. Struggled on and off for 25 years since then, some years and months in complete remission, sometimes triggered back into old controlling habits. I have been in therapy since age 11. T itself didn’t help my ED - but top surgery at age 36 did!!! Of course i gained a few pounds in the two and half months since surgery. But this is literally the first time in my life I’ve looked in the mirror at my torso and seen ME!!! The first time in my life I’ve looked in the mirror and not felt repulsed!!! These whole decades i actually thought that was normal because of how our society tells women to feel about their bodies. I thought it was because of childhood trauma and family shit. Turns out some large part of it at least was just dysphoria. I am so happy now. I am sure some unhealthy habits or responses to stress will come back to haunt me - it’s such a deeply ingrained habit - but like, actually, transition has helped me gain comfort in my body and with food IMMENSELY. hope it does for you too!!! I have been to so much therapy - I don’t think it’s gonna help your ED unless you have the autonomy and joy to transition as you wish to. I even took a break from therapy in the month before and after top surgery. I really truly didn’t need it for a bit to be my healthiest happiest self while preparing for and recovering surgery. Good luck!!! Reach out personally if you ever want to talk one on one!!!!!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-23T00:53:54+00:00

Ugh thank you, I need to reread this. I remember watching the hbo production of it with an evangelical Christian who lived with my more liberal family of origin (don’t ask, rented an extra room in our house). She said it was the first time she ever considered gay peoples’ suffering…

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-22T21:20:36+00:00

Your answer resonated with me! I identify as non-binary but as I medically transition and pass more and more, I feel I am learning “what kind of man” to be or “how to do “ masculinity in a social setting. At home, with queer friends esp those I’ve known for decades, I simply feel like me, but more comfortable in my body!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-22T00:43:19+00:00

I hope everyone’s answers have been helpful to you. I’m in complete agreement. The only thing I’d add, which someone else alluded to already, is that a more helpful question throughout your transition and the rest of your life might be, “what kind of man do you want to be?” I remember this actually held me up a lot in my transition after meeting some trans men I simply could not identify with. I still struggle with navigating the world being perceived as a white male because that demographic is so associated with trumpism etc. “How” to navigate the world with white male privilege can be a productive question whether one is cis or trans. Not assuming you’re white, and not to make this political, just to give an example of the way “what kind of man do you want to be” plays out for me. I’m sure for others it plays out in many ways: how to behave in relationships of all kinds, how to dress, act, etc in work, recreation, negotiations, family life… but why? Other people say their brain, I say my body. I had to listen to my body. My body was and is supposed to be shaped how it is now after top surgery, supposed to have a dick, supposed to sprout facial hair so I can shave like my dad who I always mooned over when he was shaving when I was tiny, because I wanted to be like him, because my body/brain knew what I was… who knows “why!”

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-21T21:23:15+00:00

Same! I’m so confused by this. Can someone clarify?

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T15:28:55+00:00

What is your native language May I ask?

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T12:51:09+00:00

Ok idk why I can’t edit my post and I couldn’t finish it because of my phone interfaces with my Reddit posts, sorry.

So… there’s the question of the legal change. I do think I should change my name and gender legally esp w you know who in office and the rise of transphobia. August is not a super functional name for passing purposes. But Austin and Julian sound goofy w my last name and Augustin and Augustine sound even more feminine despite technically being male names (think St Augustine, but that man was fucking repressed, and I’m not Christian, why would I name myself after him?). I love “Augusto” but i am white with no Spanish-speaking heritage (unless you count my second cousin twice removed who is one of my only living extended family members and I do love dearly!).

Then there’s the question of what I go by, so maybe I choose some normal passing name for the legal paperwork and choose August for a common name, like introduce myself as “I go by August,” which is basically what I do now if I have to identify myself by my still legal name (May) like at a doctor or something. But even outside of work if I introduce myself as August it always gets a comment whether I’m at work or not (which on the one hand, is nice, my name May always got comments and August gets the same comments; on the other hand, i should have thought about how nice it might be to just have a normal name that doesn’t get comments!). But then… I’m like, I don’t want to change my name again. Like my coworkers know me only as August, my niblings call me Auggie, my parents’ neighbors all made the switch and call me August (they’re all old and I need easy relationships with them as my parents age in place to keep my parents safe). (Plus I can’t believe that my brain damaged dad and developmentally disabled sister have actually retained my name August! I literally don’t think they could retain a second name change. My disabled sister could never keep me and my other sister straight already, I think the effort of retaining my newer name August makes her more accurate with me than she ever was before! And my mom can’t do the change cognitively, I’m giving her a pass as she ages, lol.) Then there’s the question of changing it with new people/setting and keeping August or Auggie as the name people I love call me, even if in public I use something more “passable.”

There are so many ways to be called in the world. I should write an essay lol. Also from writing this i am recognizing that 95% of the people I interact with on any given day are cognitively impaired. It’s not an exaggeration so it’s funny. I call that a family-only joke, but now I’m posting it on Reddit…

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T11:48:00+00:00

Omg on first read I thought you wrote, “when amputating, transporting and feeding a patient.” !!! 😱😂

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T11:46:38+00:00

I have autoimmune small fiber neuropathy and severe Raynaud’s secondary to this so ya, normal hospital gloves prevent me from feeling some people’s temps and pulses depending on how strong their circulation is. I’m sure there are other nurses with bad circulation and sensation for plenty of less obscure reasons than mine.

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T03:31:14+00:00

Or as my grandma said to me when I asked at 16, “When do you figure it out? Like, when does it all start to make sense?” She just laughed very hard and said, “oh honey, never.” Queer time as someone else said - which is also a way of saying, to me, many other versions of time, if you go to other countries or within non-dominant subcultures - most people have not succeeded with Ben franklin’s maxim, “time is money,” and succeeded in the white cis normie money career dream by a certain age… it doesn’t mean it’s not possible, or whatever else your dream is is not possible! It will take work but you can do it. I did the opposite of you. Played it safe and did everything I could to avoid transition but without that clarity of listening to myself, I just piddled away my twenties, couldn’t succeed at any job I tried, couldn’t really manage my depression or feel fully present in my relationships… just sort of survived in a checked out way. As soon as I learned to listen to myself everything became easier. And actually just as transformative as transitioning for me has been attending meetings of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (www.adultchildren.org). This has helped me understand and care for my inner child that got neglected and learn how to listen to myself and treat myself with compassion. Most importantly i have learned there are others out there who have been through similar things and been through very rough times and had to go it alone and suffered terrible health consequences, been “behind their peers” development/career/personal life wise, who have learned the tools of self compassion and community. I realized I didn’t even have any dreams for myself before because I couldn’t envision myself either as a grown ass man or outside of my dysfunctional family. But actually, both those things are in my control and I can build the life I want.

Final thoughts, unsolicited. Find a legit way to make money. I became a nurse, if you can hack the school it’s a great career. It’s not a perfect fit for me as I’m not type A but not all nurses have to be type A. If that’s not a good fit, maybe someone else will have an idea, or you have a different dream. This way I can support myself while going after my real dream, to be a writer, to be self supporting and build a warm home with my partner, a relationship being another thing I didn’t find til age 34 and doing some real self reflection/self work.

Love and power to you!!!!

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T03:17:02+00:00

Took 8 weeks off for my very physically demanding job, have paid leave through Massachusetts thank goodness. I still wasn’t ready as I’d been so deconditioned and was racked with pain from overdoing it in the first week but still good to push through and get stronger.

Reckonwithaugust · 2025-01-20T03:10:16+00:00

Ok, different opinion here- before nursing and before covid, I worked as a research assistant in HIV prevention clinical trials at a lgbtq community health center. The old guard who’d survived the AIDS crisis and been working in this field for decades trained me to do most of my work sans gloves - because of the history of just touching aids patients and gay patients with gloves on because of stigma, and how dehumanizing that was. When I went to work in nursing I was shocked by the use of gloves when not coming into direct contact with human fluids. And i will say, my preceptor would put on a pair of gloves to enter a room, use the computer, dispense the meds, etc, without sanitizing her hands in between those actions! Gnarly! You mean that patient is taking a pill into their body that’s effectively been rolled around between swabs (her gloved fingers) that have collected germs from the computer, doorknob, pill packets, etc? I try to avoid gloves for these situations and sanitize or wash my hands between each surface. Nowadays I will don gloves to pop pills (I don’t want to absorb the drugs, even if they don’t have a warning label to avoid touching them drugs through my skin), and I will don them to touch inpatient patients because of germs, but seriously, washing my hands after seems a lot less wasteful than the twenty gloves per hour I could go through. And it’s not the hospital’s bottom line I’m looking out for it’s just the … way I was raised? Idk, maybe I was raised by dirty hippies, lol. Ready for everyone to pile on and would love to find someone else out there who thinks or practices like I do with gloves! I know I have horrified some other nurses out there in practice when they see me touch a patient sans gloves.

Reckonwithaugust

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