How to ask dad/boss for a raise.?

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okay. so. this.

so we come down off US 128 to the fork with the main highway to arches and get ready to go up and do our hit & run job on the park itself. george wants to buy a bottle of water or something, so we decide to stop at this roadside establishment right by the junction.

we can’t really see the place from the road. as we come down into the parking lot, i start to realize i’m really struggling to get a feel for the place. it seems new, maybe even still under construction. also lost in some kind of gray area in between strip mall, private residence, highway rest area, national park service visitor center, and who knows what else. will they sell us water? can’t tell.

i park the car. we get out. george starts to go over to the door labeled "gift shop" on his water mission, but i’m getting a "no water" vibe from it, and say so. looks less like a convenience store and more like a place that sells maps, commemorative spoons, etc. might have been totally wrong – george sort of agreed with my assessment and we never went inside, so now we’ll never know, because we’re DEFINITELY never going back. but i’m getting to that.

so – the gift shop is on the far left. we start walking the complex to the right. the next thing is this fountain. just an outdoor courtyard fountain, but with two mildly dilapidated plastic duck decoys adrift in it, one of them listing badly to port. it strikes a very odd note. i take this picture.

the next building seems to be set up like some kind of dining hall – glass doors, closed, rows of tables inside, like a cafeteria, but – george says later (i didn’t notice this at the time) – with the chairs all facing the same direction, as if oriented to some unseen focal point. no people are visible. one of us – i forget which – says what we’re both starting to wonder: "is this… some kind of cult compound?"

we walk around that building and there’s not really much else – a chunk of windowless building, two other tourists discussing a map in front of their cars (the only other people we see). "this place seems useless," we agree. we’re about to give up and leave when i notice they have bathrooms and decide, might as well.

so i go in the men’s room. the door opens on pitch blackness, but after about two seconds motion-activated lights flicker on. so. must not be heavily used, then. but ok.

so i walk on in and confront the urinal. seems to basically be in order. a little space-agey. the drain area is weird, not your standard raised metal drain grating or anything like that, no scent cake. just a white circle, much more flush with the bottom of the trough than you normally see. but, it’s obviously a urinal, so it must work out, right? so i go ahead and start.

after about ten seconds i notice that nothing’s draining. it’s all just gathering in the bottom. the level keeps rising and rising. all right, i say to myself. should be all right. just a weird system is all.

so i finish. me and my puddle consider each other. given the automatic lights and the overall space-age vibe in the bathroom, not to mention the lack of an obvious handle, i’m expecting some kind of autoflush to kick in after a second. i step back plenty. nothing. wave my hand a little. hi puddle! silence.

there’s one knob-like protrusion above the urinal on the wall. kind of a short pipe-end. doesn’t really look like a button, but, well, it’s the only thing there, so i whack it with my elbow. (i maintain a general no-hands policy vis-a-vis bathroom infrastructure unless hands are absolutly vital.) no hint of a thing happening. whack it again. judo chop! no.

well, so, ok. maybe it’s stuck. if it’s a moving part, it’s definitely one of those metal-on-metal nested telescoping tube type buttons, of that type which i haven’t encountered much since my childhood in public school bathrooms in the early 80s. those could get really stuck if the top part got even a little bit out of line, so sometimes extreme force was required.

so, i step back and give the thing a front kick right out of the old TKD white belt at jae H kim. bang! i pull my quad. nothing happens to the button, which at this point is obviously not really a button but just a piece of pipe that happens to be sticking out of the wall for people with poor martial arts skills to beat the shit out of without using their hands until they get bruised enough or pull enough muscles to be captured easily. well, i’m not falling for that. any more than i already have.

i stand back even farther and try waiting for the autoflush a little more. nothing happens. this is taking too long. starting to worry about somebody else coming in and finding me like this. i don’t want to leave my sad little yellow puddle just sitting there in this otherwise pristine white men’s room, at the bottom of this inert urinal which must be so technologically advanced that i’m really hoping it isn’t actually some new kind of hand-dryer i’ve badly misidentified, but i can’t see any other options here.

finally i give up. "well, i whizzed on that," i say out loud and turn to the sinks. nice row of sinks. no handles. with a little bit of urgency, i wiggle a hand under the faucet. nothing happens.

so all this time george has been standing around outside, next to the creepy dining room, thinking or taking pictures or wondering where he might get some water. at around this time (he tells me later) he’s starting to think, "well, i guess i might as well hit the bathroom too, but i don’t want to weird him out, i’ll wait till he comes out."

so there he is right by the door when i burst out, walk by without stopping, without looking at him, saying quietly but firmly, "we have to get out of here." he stands there for a second, says, "wait, what just…" – but immediately realizes that i’m actually pretty serious – "let’s go" i say, barely audible, without looking back, already halfway to the car – so he gets in the car without even saying anything else – waits until we pull back onto the highway, then asks me – "okay, what the hell happened in there?" i tell him the story. we drive about a third of a mile to the arches visitor center, where, george reports to me, they have perfectly normal bathrooms. for all i know the puddle is still there, in utah.

Question by Erin s: How to ask dad/boss for a raise.?
I feel that it is time for a raise. How can I bring this up to him. I have no idea where to start or what to say. Please give me some ideas, tips and suggestions. Also my last raise was supposed to be 1.00 after someone putting there nose where it doesnt belong it was only .50. Is asking for 1.50 to much? I guess my thought is I will just ask for my normal $ 1.00 raise as usall and not push it?

Thanks

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