Everyone’s life goes through good and bad cycles. It’s kind of like investing. Make the ups as big as possible and make the downs a minimum. If things are going great there will be a downturn at some point where more challenges hit. Don’t worry about when it will happen, just make the most of it while things are going your way.

When things seem to be falling into place it usually means you’re making the right decisions.

Personally I’m astounded that a person of apparently reasonable intelligence can’t figure out what to do in this situation.

Just write down your choices on a piece of paper and, yes, that one good choice among all the terrible choices is the one you should choose. I don’t want to insult your intelligence by telling you what you should do in this situation.

Here’s a hint. If you allow this person to be in a position to rip you off for a single penny more you’re 100% at fault.

You’re intentionally and willingly keeping an employee around who talks smack about you behind your back and you know it. And you’re saying, “What do I do?”

You know what to do.

I was a principal in a company where we used the golden handcuffs approach to handling our employees. Our number one trait for hiring was someone who fit into our culture and someone we felt we could trust. If they proved themselves we made runs at them with big raises and paths to even greater prosperity. Nobody ever left our company voluntarily unless they were moving. We made it so attractive nobody would ever think of leaving, and that approach was one of the things that made our company successful.

It sounds like you’re doing the same kind of thing, rewarding your employees financially to incent them to stay. But you’re missing a major part of the process, which entails culling employees with entitlement mentalities or employees who otherwise are net drags on the business. So many workers today look at companies who hire them as evil greedy stupid, etc., and they have some moral imperative to attempt to do damage.

That’s why the guy with the big raise didn’t think it was enough. It’s never enough. Those kinds of employees despise you.

If you’re willing to open the money spigot to employees you need to expect the employees to bring a lot to the table as well. That’s the area you need to improve. There are people left who have a good work ethic, it just takes some effort to find them.