What horseshit. I’m sorry, but she’s in complete la-la land. You don’t just get loyalty – it’s earned, for one, and even then you can’t expect an employee to value loyalty over their own best interest.
I’ve had a manager like this, with the same expectations. She liked me very much and told me I was a star employee, but that didn’t really make up for the micromanagement, the coming-down-ridiculously-hard-over-nothing incidents, the confrontational style, taking credit for my work, ridiculous and useless busywork, zero flexibility, and a lot of other issues. When my old company called me and offered me to be hired back, with a raise, and a promotion, I gave notice and she acted personally affronted about the whole thing. This, by the way, was just after she had promised me a promotion and reneged, then gave me a lecture about how other people were being laid off so I should be grateful for just keeping my job.
I told her that it seemed like she was short on positions for her staff and I was leaving for better opportunities. “But I had so many plans for you! How can you leave me?” Great, I’d love to stay for amorphous plans you’ve never shared with me rather than a known raise and promotion, after you’ve already led me on this long. She didn’t come up with a counter-offer but I did get the cold shoulder for my notice, so that was super.
She did, on the other hand, call me on my first day at the new/old job to ask me to help her with routine work she should know how to do.
Yeah, I’m glad I left that job. There’s only one boss I ever had personal loyalty to and he was the one who encouraged me to seek work elsewhere when conditions got bad. He actually cared, and didn’t expect loyalty just because.