He's talking about thresholds, not the actual salary. The fact that they said 44k to 45k and not 44.9k to 45k or 44.5k to 45k is just a coincidence.

For example. Say there's a threshold at 100k and the guy was currently at 90k salary. 10k would put him at 100k and that's no good. He would've accepted a 9k raise, however. He had an issue with going from 99k to 100k, not the whole raise. Or in op's case, 44 to 45k.

Or at least that's how I understood it.