A year and a half ago my wife was working for a law firm doing their real estate work. She busted her ass through the pandemic and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of income over the past 5 years. She had been pestering them for a raise of $1.50 an hour, bringing her up to $18.50 hourly. The three partners asked her to stay after work one day and said we will give you a $1 per hour raise, because we've heard of some complaints about your work.
My wife looked at them sidelong, who complained? They wouldn't say. She said, let me think about it. The next day she turned in her resignation. She was insulted by their attempt to “neg” her into accepting what was well below what she was worth.
She took a few months off, all the while looking at their desperate indeed.com postings. Looking for a secretary that could handle real estate for $12.50-$13. Finally they called her and asked her to do a one-off commercial project. She told them $5000, with $2500 up front, the rest at closing for about 20 hours of work. They paid it.
A couple of months after that, another law office called her asking if she was interested in working for them. She said maybe, what's the pay? $28 an hour with monthly bonuses. Uh, yeah! She laughs a lot thinking about how for only $.50 more an hour, she would have still been with those assholes who tried to neg her.