A year ago, I walked in to my boss' office and demanded a 15% salary raise. I presented to him some statistics of the average salary in my field of work and the numbers of years of experience I had at the time. I told him that he had told me that he was pleased with my performance, so I wanted the average.
He told me that the salary raise I asked for wasn't in line with the company's salary policy, and that he could give me at most 5%. He also told me how outrageous my demand was since it would mean that I would get more than others in the same department who had more years' of experience than me.
I said OK, as I didn't want to argue with my boss. I contacted a friend of mine who works in the recruiting business. He made a few calls, and a week later I was at a job interview with another company in the same city. They offered me a 25% salary increase and more benefits. I gave my boss the 1 month's + current month's notice as is the law in Denmark. He was furious. I told my colleagues about the situation, and all four of them asked for my friend's number, and 3 months later they had all found a higher paid position. The entire department and all the knowledge disappeared because a company that made a 15 million USD profit didn't want to pay their workers a fair share. Last I heard, they had found two newly educated workers to replace us, but have had to turn down several potential multi million dollar sales projects because those projects are NOT going to happen without that department being fully staffed.
But oh well, they saved some few pennies in salary expenses facepalm