When you come into the office carrying a job offer from a rival company, you imagine it is a bargaining counter that will have your employer buy you an expensive lunch, declare corporate love and come up with a big fat pay rise.

So it is a shock when your boss leaps to offer congratulations and promises that you can go immediately.

It is a secret of office life that employers rarely see in you the value that you see in yourself.

The best that they can do is to conceal their amazement that someone else has offered you a job. If you’re lucky, they will also hide the joy that they feel in getting rid of you without giving you money to go.

The lesson is never to talk about another job unless you are happy to take it.

But one day, your dream may come true. Someone decides you are good at what you do and makes an effort to keep you. This is like having an extra birthday. You have entered management consciousness. You are the centre of attention. Your colleagues talk about you with new respect.

Whatever you do, don’t confuse this attention with love. Bosses think that they decide when you get attention and a pay rise, not you.

So while they may fight to keep you because they think you are good for the business, they will never forgive you for bringing them a problem, for threatening the balance of the salary budget, and for achieving control of your own destiny.

Enjoy the moment while you can: like other birthdays, it will soon be over. They will be nice to you for a day, which means you should decide quickly whether or not you are staying.

Your assertion of power is making them uncomfortable, for no one in management can allow an employee to hold a company to ransom. When they wake up tomorrow they will hate themselves for sucking up to you.

That’s when you’ll find you’ve decided to stay just as they’ve decided that it’s time for you to go.

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