This morning I got a phone call from the Boss. “I couldn’t just sit here and let this go any longer,” he told me. It had to be something major, right? And probably something bad?

It seems Julie has been visiting him at The Kennel, but she left in a huff early today, telling him that she thought both she and I were underpaid, and that I was very unhappy and sometimes didn’t have enough money to buy groceries. He wanted to know if I thought I was underpaid. I didn’t have to answer now, he said. He told me to think about it, and do some research into what people who do what I do are paid. (And if I didn’t feel comfortable looking into it, he would ask his brother, who runs a larger business in a different state.)

Uncomfortable hardly described how I felt during this conversation. I was squirming almost from the second I picked up the phone, and oh so relieved when he finally hung up. He told me that Julie would probably call me to talk about this, once she gets back home and settled. I think he wanted me to tell her that I’m not unhappy, but he wouldn’t come out and say that. It’s just a feeling I got from the way he was talking about it.

And to be honest, I’m not unhappy. I have been. I was for a long, long time, but he never asked me about my mood then, when I really was woefully underpaid. He gave me a big raise last month, the biggest single increase I’ve had since I started working for him over twenty years ago. Before that, Julie and I were being paid the same hourly rate. I thought she knew I was getting a raise, but maybe not.

I told the Boss I wouldn’t be unhappy if her pay rate were the same as mine. He thinks I’m more valuable than she is, and maybe I am, but only because she’s there to take up the slack. And she works far fewer hours than I do. I’m paid on the basis of a 40-hour week. She got paid for four and a half hours for all of last week.

I don’t know exactly what to do, but I don’t have time to do a lot of research right now anyway. I’m too busy trying to finish the Big Project. I kind of like having that as an excuse not to answer his questions right away. I wouldn’t mind a raise, but I’m not up for rocking the boat when things seem to be sailing along so well, for once.

Julie got the idea that I was unhappy from me, but I think she might have been projecting a little of her own problems into the discussion with the Boss today. For the first time in many years, I have a little extra money in the bank, so I don’t have to worry about paying bills on time. I don’t know how long this will last, but I can’t claim to be struggling right now. Relatively speaking, anyway. I know what it feels like to be at the end of the money, and I think I can get the Boss to agree that I’ll never have to be in that position again. For now, that’s all the security I need.