I had a decent IT job working for my local county. I was making about 55k. Then in May of last year they fired me. They said it was for performance but really I think they had someone willing to work for way less and I was the newest person. Anyway I searched like hell for another IT spot in my area for 3 months and UI was about to run out. I finally got an offer from an MSP that was about 25 minutes away. Not too bad.
The actual offer was for 40k. I told them I couldn't accept that large of a pay cut but they knew I was unemployed and desperate. They adjusted the offer to 42k and told me after 90 days they'd re-evaluate. So I took a 13k pay cut out of desperation.
The entire time I worked there I kept applying and interviewing. Right after my 90 day review where I got a measly 1k raise, I landed an interview at a place back in my own town, for a company that was a competitor of another company I worked at years ago. The interview went great and they offered me 52k to start. I was ecstatic. No more commuting to work, no driving all over the fucking state for all their different clients. I'd have one office to support and paid on-call rotation. Great offer.
When I gave my 2 weeks notice, they asked if there was something wrong and if there was anything they could do to keep me. I told them that there was nothing really wrong, but that I was upfront with what my previous salary was and I was pretty disappointed to have taken that pay cut to work here. I told them I had hoped that after seeing what I could do, they'd have tried to adjust my salary to be in line with what it was previously. I told them to keep me they would need to beat this offer pretty substantially, because I was putting much more wear and tear on my vehicle, and losing a lot of time traveling. They said they'd talk it over and get back with me.
The manager later called me and said he didn't feel like they needed to beat the offer, because they could work out a company vehicle for me to use and maybe try to get me in the office more, so their counter offer to me was to match the 52k offer from the new job. I laughed and said, “well I'm sorry that we have different viewpoints on what is important, I will be accepting the offer from the other employer.”
I can't imagine having the stones to tell someone you're only willing to match the number they just told you had to be beat. They lost someone who convinced a large client to basically triple their spending to get me on-site for them more days, who covered when their other big clients were going berserk, and basically jumped into any role they asked of me. All over a few thousand dollars a year for them.
The new job is going great and every week my manager tells me how impressed he is and how I'm a great asset to the team.