In 2015, I had been working for a company for five years. I was one of two people selected to create a new global program in less than a week and hire managers/teams for seven locations. I had eight direct reports, she had seven, and we were responsible for the Seattle business overall. We reported into a white woman who had been the team manager for four years at the time. She never gave me a bad review or gave me any constructive/negative feedback. She always told me I was great at my job and had no feedback for me. As a people manager, we were doing the annual manager level feedback for our direct reports. Our director was fond of using a nine box grid to rank the employees (which I wasn't a fan of ranking employees). She used this as a way to adjust bonuses and raises for her entire department. Our director had used the same grid for the managers (my peers). There was a director named Daniel that she meant to email the grid to but since she emailed me more often, she sent the attachment to me. As the email came from my director, I opened it immediately. To my surprise, I was put int the "mediocre" category. There were managers that I had hired for other locations, that had only been at the company for less than a month, ranked higher than me, along with my co-manager. I was very upset. I knew my boss was the one that filled it out and put me in that category. Within five minutes, the director messaged me asking me not to open the email she just sent me. I informed her that it was too late, I already read it, to which she simply said "sorry". No follow up.
As someone that wants to be able to improve, I decided to ask my manager directly about me being mediocre and how I could improve in our one on one. She told me that there was nothing that I needed to improve work wise. That she scored me lower than everyone else because she "didn't feel an emotional connection" to me and that I "didn't tell her enough about my personal life". I honestly don't think I've ever been so mad at work. I was her only black employee that reported to her. How was this ok? I kept thinking that I can't show my anger or else I'd be labeled as the "angry black woman". But all that emotion came out in the form of tears. She apologized for upsetting me. After I got control of my emotions, we continued the meeting.
I was good friends with my co-manager so I told her about the meeting. She told me that she doesn't share personal information with our manager either and that she has never been told anything like that. I also asked other peer managers as I was friends with them as well. They all told me the same thing, they don't share personal information with my manager. It felt like because I was a different race than her, she needed a way to "connect" to me in order to justify paying me the same amount as my peers. Despite having better peer/direct employee review feedback, better metrics, and better feedback from outside departments compared to any manager at my level, I was still paid $10k less than all of my white peers.