One of the gentlemen ended up leaving with in a year. I had been asking him to fill out a self performance assessment so I could get him a hefty raise. The other guy is quite timid, somewhat immature, and socially inept... I suppose he was getting paid what he and his personality deserves. No?
Or I could have gone about righting the ship rather than throwing all the weight on one side and sinking it... causing not only the two underpaid guys to lose their jobs but also the rest of the dozen employees. Which would be the more appropriate move in your opinion?
If you'd like I could just as easily justified by rationalizing why they deserve what they were getting paid... because that's what they were getting paid. Their backgrounds/education wasn't very strong and (at least one of them) had poor judgement and reasoning skills (I mean look what he was accepting for pay!).
ADD: The one I probably wouldn't have ever hired in the first place, but he was there before, knew a fare amount of the current situation, and unfortunately got hired because his mom new one of the managing partners. The managing partners were also somewhat clueless to what they were wrongly paying...
You obviously thought about this and got it into account. But being a bit smarter ape that we are all, you decided on what way of going about this is best for you. As a rational ape you should at least understand this much.
The thing is, we are all mature apes and we understand possible problems and we can decide for ourselves if the risk is worth it in a specific situation we're in at one time or another. And we do so, and we have every right to do so, and you trying to take it away from us is very apish and understandable, but unacceptable behaviour.
When a colleague asks me about my salary I think about what to tell him for myself. I consider how well I know him, how long we've been working together, how likely he is to be underpaid, how likely he is to get angry because of it and so on and on. I then decide to either tell him or not, and also on how specific my answer should be, and so on.
Sorry, but I'll trust my own judgement over your arbitrary decision you made without taking into account any of those situation specific things, and - not to forget - for your benefit.