I used to be a service engineer at a company and I would ask for a sub-inflation increase every year. Every year the CEO would tell me that they cannot give us a increase until the company's books are in the black?
We actually had a company meeting one Friday where he would tell the whole company that the company is deeply indebted and that they are struggling to reach investors goals. The following Monday he came to the office with a brand new Porsche.
So I decided fck this, and started looking for another job. Especially since over the last 3 years the department workload had increased while the number of engineers in the department almost halved (again without any increases)
I got another offer and put in my 30 days notice and within 5hrs the CEO calls me from his vacation and offers me a 103% increase on my base salary as a counter offer.
The best part was that they were in such a panic (or at least I want to believe they were) that they made a mistake on the wording of the counter offer. Stipulating that the increase would be effective immediately without a clause specifically saying that I need to accept the counter offer so they had to pay me my “new” salary the day I left.
Needless to say the exit interview was just about the most fun I had at the company before packing my shit and never turning back.