Brave Wells Fargo employee asks CEO for a raise — in an open letter to hundreds of thousands of employees

Asking your boss for a raise can be a nerve-wracking endeavor — so nerve-wracking, in fact, that many employees feel afraid to go through with it at all.

But not Tyrel Oates.

When the Oregon-based Wells Fargo employee decided to gather the courage to ask for a pay bump, he took his request all the way to the top, emailing the company's CEO John Stumpf — and cc'ing hundreds of thousands of his fellow employees.

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Oates says he took the drastic measure because he wanted to make a point about income inequality. "My proposal is take $3 billion, just a small fraction of what Wells Fargo pulls in annually, and raise every employee's annual salary by $10,000," Oates wrote in the email, adding that the company could also use his request as an opportunity to "show the rest of the United States, if not the world, that, yes, big corporations can have a heart other than philanthropic endeavors."

Stumpf, who is one of the highest-paid bank CEOs in the U.S., brought in more than $19 million last year. So far, he has not responded to Oates' request.