Written By: Abir Yassin
Breaking Bad is a well-known crime drama television series. The story of the series is about an underestimated, genius, underpaid and depressed high school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who is diagnosed with lung cancer. Along with his former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) white started a crime life cooking and selling crystalized Methamphetamine. White had that extreme career shift from a teacher to a drug producer in order to secure his family financially after his death.
It may sound funny to you, but underpaid employees can go through depression and even have suicidal tendencies, according to some researches. Not all teachers are as dark genius as Walter White, and go to the crime life correspondingly to a personal medical report. Teaching, in particular, is known globally to be one of the most underpaid professions. We all have a friend who works as a teacher and you know exactly what I am talking about, especially when you know that this teacher has so much potential, and is very well talented yet struggles through his/her life because of the low paycheck.
Not only teachers who are struggling with underpayment, in every profession there is THAT boss who don’t appreciate his/her employees and give them their due. There are a lot of signs to know if you are an underpaid or no, for example, when your level of responsibility has increased and your salary hasn’t. Or maybe you get a raise but it is like 1% to 3% of your salary through the last two years. A more obvious sign for being underpaid, that you never asked for a raise, according to an analysis by Salary.com that failing to negotiate could potentially cost you more than a million dollar over the course of your career. Last but not least you have to ask yourself this question, how fair is what you earn on your job in comparison to others doing the same type of work you do?!
What underpaying can do is that it breeds frustration like what happened with Walter White. His cancer was the last straw, for a man who never had a cigarette, to break down or break bad and start cooking Meth. Not just in drama series that work and being an underpaid can affect your health. Due to some studies the least underpaying can do to a human body that it raises the risks of rating oneself as having pour health, headaches and stomach, back and chest pains. It hurts when you feel that you are under-rated and get less than what (you think) is fair on an emotional and even physical level.
Final word to any business owner, invest in your employees, and you will gain much more when they are well-paid and in good health, emotionally and physically. It affects the productivity and when the employee loses the motivation and enthusiasm, everything in the work station goes down.