First off, completely disregarding the legal status of this, it is both hilarious and encouraging to see this. Why? Because people too often seem to forget th

First off, completely disregarding the legal status of this, it is both hilarious and encouraging to see this. Why? Because people too often seem to forget that companies you work for actively are likely trying to minimize how much you get from them, regardless of the value you give them. In this situation, Francis is a key employee on the team (the poster says as much), yet he has office politics torpedo a promotion. As far as the company training goes, Francis is doing everything wrong. As far as how you should behave towards a company that does not respect you or anywhere near your value, he's doing a good job playing the cards he has. I have no empathy for bad company policies or politics. In this situation, a good response would have been for HR to tell Francis how valuable they think he is to the company and that they were going to push through a different path for the promotion, and then to actually do it. Francis likely would not be acting this way without an obvious pattern of disrespect in the culture, and a feeling of being used by the company. If he sees the company (HR) show how much they value him and fight for him to be compensated more because of that, he would likely back off his defensive and combative stance.