Why would she leave $15K on the table to placate her former manager? There’s a good chance she wouldn’t have even tried to find another job if they had given her $60K from the jump.

Leaving a job can be an emotional process for all involved. Your manager might have thought that you were going to be in the position for much longer than you were, so they might act irrationally upon your leaving. When I was in college, I left a job at the library after five months, and my boss was absolutely devastated. Every time she saw me during my last two weeks, she would cry. At the time, I felt like she was trying to make me feel guilty with crocodile tears. After all, I was getting paid minimum wage to handle priceless archives! A job as a junior security guard or a dining hall employee paid more than this position, and she was expecting me to stay just because she didn’t want to hire anyone else. 

If you are paying employees next to nothing, you cannot be shocked when they go searching for greener pastures, especially when they explicitly said in the interview that they are looking for a higher salary than your company can offer. The employee in this story left their new job after only three weeks because they got an offer for $23K more. Wouldn’t you do the same thing if you were her?