Negotiating is a delicate matter. It can take a lot of skill and gumption to get what you are looking for.

If you were told you couldn’t get a raise unless you had a job offer at another company, would you start applying for jobs or accept your current salary?

Keep reading to see how networking helped this clever job applicant.

Provide a offer? Don’t mind if I do

My friend Dave was working for a company for a few years, liked it there, liked the job, liked everything but the pay.

His company pretty much only gave raises if you had a competing offer.

Dave’s boss knew this, and advised him as such since he wanted to keep Dave.

Dave didn’t want to interview anywhere else. However, the supervisor who had hired him, we’ll call him Bruce, had moved on to another job.

A perfect opportunity was born.

Dave called Bruce, told him the situation and Bruce was just like ” I’ve got an idea, I’ll send you an offer letter, how much should you be making?”

Dave was making $85k at the time, and based on his skills, experience, etc., should have been making about $110k so that’s what he told Bruce.

Bruce said not to worry and that he’d take care of it.

Dave gets an email from Bruce, doesn’t look too hard at it and tells his supervisor the next day that he has an offer and was wondering if his job would counter.

Their alliance led to an amazing result.

Dave forwards the letter from Bruce, and Dave’s boss gets back to him offering him $130k to stay.

Bruce, because he didn’t actually need to budget for this position (because it was fake), put $125k in the offer letter.

He also had a knowledge of Dave’s unit’s budget, having formerly worked there, and knew they’d afford it to keep Dave.

That is how Dave maliciously complied with a fake offer later to get a raise.

That was really clever and worked out really well!

Here is what people are saying on Reddit.

What a guy!

I know this refers to Batman and I’m so proud of myself.

I hope you get out soon.

It’s weird that people think they can be anonymous online.

I bet!

This is unethical, but I doubt they care.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.