My manager's reason for denying the raise? It seems I negotiated 'too well' when I was hired.

I've been with my current job for about four years. Recently, and especially in the past few months, the workload has increased significantly, and I've taken on many new responsibilities. So naturally, I thought this was the most appropriate time to discuss a salary raise, especially since I haven't seen any increase since day one. I asked my manager about it, and he told me he would look into it.

A little while later, he called me in. What was his explanation? Simply, there's no 'bandwidth' in the budget for my salary to increase. And then he hinted that if I had accepted a lower salary initially when I was hired, there might have been more flexibility for raises later on.

Mind you, I'm not earning a huge amount here. I just found the whole situation incredibly absurd, so I had to share it somewhere.