This was some time ago at a previous employer but it fits here.
At the time I, worked for a technology company which has some rather large clients you would recognize if I listed them.
At the time they where in an interesting state, they had grown rapidly and where transitioning from small company to large company. An example and relevant was that when I started with the company I joined the Company hockey team.. really it was a glorified beer league team but I was good enough to be near the top of the league and was quickly moved to the CEOs line.
Now I started here out of college and my first role in the organization was on support. And I had a terrible manager. We will call her… A. she had this habit of assigning me tickets which had no chance of being solved before the end of my day and telling me they are urgent. I would have to stay late to get it done. One day she did the same move, I told her I couldn't stay we had an early game and I had to make it to the rink by 5pm and it was an hour drive. She said to bad you can't leave until this is done.. then proceeded to sign out and leave 30 minutes early.
I was 40 minutes late and missed the first half of the game. The ceo was pissed being supper competitive even in bear league.. I said fuck it this is not worth it and just told him what A had done.
Next day I come in and the CEO walks in 10 minutes later, B-lines it to my work area asks A to join him in his office and 20 minutes later she comes out red faced.. she never again assigned me work before the end of my day. She did assign me the worst things she could though.
Fast forward 6 years I have consistently moved up the food chain and I'm now the technical lead of one of our implementation teams and working for a decent guy but my pay sucks.. I'm just making ends meat with mortgage payments and such. Then a restructure happens and my manager is promoted cause shit, he is competent, and we get introduced to our new manager.. A.
I work for her for 6 months, all sorts of friction I'm not some new kid fresh out of school anymore and she is finding me hard to push around. She also hates to find out that one of our key partners doesn't want anyone else touching our joint accounts but me.
So here I am browsing the interwebs and I come across a Microsoft salary thing and I plug in my job and strike me blind… I should be making at the low end 25k more per year. I forward the link to my A and say..”makes you think hu.. I believe we should have a performance review I want a raise”
Now I am 5 days away from jumping on a plane to fly to our USA offices to train our new highers on our products and how to implement them as my team has the highest customer satisfaction, shortest imp times and least bugs reported.
The response.. “Ha!, if you think your worth that much you are dreaming, good luck finding that anywhere”
That was it, I snapped. I spent the next 4 days sprucing up my resume and posted it 1 hour before leaving. While in the USA I did 12 phone interviews. I came back to Canada did 4 inpersons and had 3 offers.. wouldn't you know it all of them 30k more then my current pay.
I accepted an offer, I walked into her office the next day and said “remeber when you wished me luck in finding that pay? Well I recieved 3 offers all for 30k more then here and have accepted, I guess i didn't need your luck. This is my 2 weeks”
But here is the second best part.. they spent three days throwing offers at me to keep me. None came close in money but they tried to offer me other things instead. I said no. But I spent the three days telling ever single person in that office how much higher my new offer was and how many I got so as soon as they figured out they couldn't keep me they escorted me out the door and paid me for 2 weeks not to come back to work!