Twelve years of experience has a way of feeling worthless when a company hands a new hire almost the same paycheck on day one.

A veteran road construction worker who had climbed from $17 an hour to just over $30 over a decade-plus of seasonal work found out that the newest guy on the crew started at $30 flat.

The worst part was that this new hire had no experience, no equipment knowledge, no history with the company. The tiny gap in pay was a bit too close for comfort for this employee.

So after the company handed him a minuscule raise after record profits, this employee started questioning how much longer he could tolerate it.

Keep reading for the full story.

Employee hired last year is making almost as much as me.

I work seasonal road construction and have been doing it for 12 years now at the same company.

Last year an operator quit, they hired a young kid — 22 years old — and started him at 18 cents less than me.

But soon something begins troubling this seasoned construction worker.

I started at $17/hr 12 years ago and was making $30.18/hr last year.

He started at $30/hr.

He notes that this kid has significantly less experience than him.

He had never touched any of the equipment we used, nor knew what any of it was prior to starting there.

We had another guy quit last year because of what they started him at.

The raise he did receive was basically a slap to the ego.

I found out today he got a 98-cent raise — all our raises were terrible because the company didn’t hit profit goals.

Not the CEO, though.

I got an 87-cent raise.

He now makes 5 cents less than me.

This injustice is starting to make him feel like he needs to leave the job for good.

I am pretty sure this will be my last season there.

I have a chance to get training running cranes this next winter.

This is just driving me up a wall.

I am going to talk to the head of personnel about it — I don’t feel it is very fair, but I am sure it will fall on deaf ears.

The math most definitely isn’t mathing here.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who reported a man to HR for calling himself her “work uncle” and giving out his phone number.

What did Reddit think?

They say changing jobs entirely is the best way to get a pay bump.

Unions exist for very good reason.

This user thinks this may be somewhat of a common phenomenon.

Loyalty is something to be rewarded, but for many workers, it’s punished.

Situations like these prove why pay transparency is so important — and why higher-ups stop at nothing to squash it.

After 12 years of loyalty, this employee absolutely deserves higher pay than someone who just started.

But no matter what, bosses don’t seem to see it that way. This kind of mistreatment just reminds average workers that, to their company, they’re just a number.

Five cents may not seem like a big deal to some, but it’s the principle of the thing.