I've been on both sides of this, receiving and allocating raises from a merit pool. Last time around I got the order from senior management that raises would be awarded on a curve in all departments, no exceptions. I had 6 direct reports at the time and to fit the curve I had to give 0% to one person, max% to one person, and some middling% to the other 4 persons. It seemed so stupid that I would have to point out how this approach fails for small numbers. In my case all 6 of my staff had received awards during the year for outstanding performance that had impacted the bottom line of the company. So giving 0% to anyone would have been utterly lacking in integrity. Rather than follow the order to do something that was completely arbitrary I told them to zero out my raise and spread it across my staff. I never even implied it, but they apparently feared that a consequence would be I would quit and take the staff with me. At the time that was a likely event. Ended up scrapping that whole idea and blowing the raise budget. Company had a banner year after that. You'd think they would have thanked me (they didn't).