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Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [updated]
An anonymous reader writes "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Microsoft, which recently laid off 1400 employees, is now claiming that some of those lucky schmoes were inadvertently overpaid on their severance package. A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected." Update: 02/24 14:00 GMT by T : VinylRecords writes "Well, now Microsoft has recanted, saying that the situation has resulted in unfortunate amounts of bad press and public relations. 'This was a mistake on our part,' said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mailed statement. 'We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner.'"
It depends on where the math got fucked up. If MS signed off on papers that promised the inflated amount, it's SOL. That would explain why they're asking for it, rather than sending legal demands.
There's nothing at all accidental about it. It's a cruel joke perpetrated by cruel people.
Yea, definitely. I bet those guys over in payroll were all like "Hahah, wouldn't it be hilarious if we paid those losers that got fired more than we should? We'd give the company even more bad press, and if we're lucky we might even get fired ourselves!"
They probably won't need luck if the following happened. Paperwork is drawn up stating that the terminated employee gets paid $2,000. Supervisor and employee sign off on that sum. Retard typing in the info for the check keys in $20,000 instead of $2,000.
The employee can't possibly think that he/she actually deserves the extra $18,000 after agreeing to the original sum.
It might be bad PR, but why is it bad morals?
If you accidentally overpay someone, you shouldn't ask for the money? I'd argue that if you know you've been overpaid, keeping the extra money is bad morals.
This just sounds symptomatic of a bureaucracy, which any sufficiently large company becomes over time when it passes a magic threshold of size, complexity and number of employees. It used to happen regularly when I was in the military, and to me and/or my troops on a number of occasions. (Started to become much more rare when the Defense Finance and Accounting Service - DFAS- automated in the, what, mid-nineties?) Sometimes I would catch the error first and try to repay it, only to be told I'd have to wait until the "system caught up." So, I'd just bank the money, then wait until I'd either be surprised by a zeroed pay-check, an angry memo, or both. So, then I'd go back to the "disbursing" office and straighten it out by repaying the overage now that the "system" is prepared to receive it. A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.
The letter asks for repayments to be sent to Fargo, North Dakota. If I got a letter purporting to be from my former company asking me to send money to a totally different state from that where I had worked and that where the company was based, I'd be more than a bit suspicious. This is apparently legit, but I wonder if any employees thought it was a scam (a scam by other than Microsoft, anyway)...
I don't have any strong evidence, but it sounded more to me like their methods for calculating what a person should be paid was just discovered to be faulty. If it really were some sort of entry error into their payment systems it seems like it should be one or two very isolated cases. When combined with that line that "some laid off employees were also undercompensated," it paints a picture for me of a broken formula. The fact that they call it an "administrative error" rather than "accounting error" also points me in that direction.
As such, these people probably agreed to the package that they ultimately received. If Microsoft actually had any right to collect the over-payments, they probably would have said so in the letter to ensure greater initial compliance--even if they ultimately had no intention to go after the money with the lawyers.
You know, I sometimes have the feeling that if some megacorporation figured out a way to make a profit torturing puppies to death, people like you would say, "Well, you know, they're just honoring their obligations to the shareholders!"
The sad thing is that the people who said that would be correct. In fact, there probably is a corporation out there right now making a profit from torturing puppies (probably a cosmetics company).
Corporations have a legal obligation to make a profit. They do not have a legal obligation to do the right thing. In fact, most seem to think that the legal obligation to turn a profit trumps the legal obligation to follow the law (in nearly every circumstance, if the chance of getting caught * the fine it would have to pay < the ROI from breaking the law, the law gets broken).
Modern corporations need severe public oversight. Or we could nix the public stock market and finally get the Supreme Court to announce "Corporations are not People". I don't think I'll live to see either of these things come to pass.
This sort of thing happens all the time, banks overpay, payroll overpays, people overpay. It happens, if you get called out on it, you are legally and morally obligated to return the money(personally I tend to point out the mistake if I see it being made as well, but that's me).
Is it a little petty to be going after terminated employees if the amounts are fairly trivial? Yeah. Do we know that the amounts are trivial? No. Remember an average of an extra grand per employee is 1.4 million dollars, not exactly pocket change, even to Microsoft.
Companies do this all the time, it's part interacting with human beings who can and do make mistakes. If anyone other than Microsoft had done this, the article wouldn't have been written.
A bureaucracy is neither evil, good, nor even conscious; it just seems that way. Who said, "never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity"? They call bureaucracies "mindless" for a reason.
I think one could make a good argument for bureaucracies exhibiting consciousness. I think that they long ago reached the point that computerized AI will reach in the future, but with humans and rules as their brains. It's always fascinating to see a bureaucracy do something that no one within it wants or understands, and it happens more than one might expect.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
You are correct in all but one minor point. They do not have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder's profit margins. They have a fiduciary responsibility. This does not necessarily mean 'financial'. It actually means that they have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholder. I will concede that it is generally assumed that by default the best thing for the shareholder is to make as much profit as possible, but it does not have to be the case. For example, most HOAs are in fact corporations. The board of most HOAs must follow their fiduciary responsibility which is assumed to be making the living conditions as good as possible. It is not assumed to be making as much profit as possible.
Other than that, You are correct.
Prove it!
Let Microsoft prove it in a court of law that it overpaid them.
Just because a BIG corporate demands money from you doesn't mean you have to bend over.
If i claim Microsoft wasted my money due to faults in its XP, would Microsoft bend over and pay me? NO
They will regretfully inform me of their inability to pay and thank me for my comments.
So, i have to sue them.
Similarly, each such employee should send a simple regret letter expressing their deep regret at microsoft and stating clearly their personal policies prevent them from paying. Neither confirm nor deny you owe them money. State POLICY.
Simple.
Microsoft will spend 10x times the money on lawyers to recover the money from you.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
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Oh man, no joke.
Guys used to have mysterious allotments coming out of their LES' now and then, with little recourse to find out other than some pay clerk telling you to do a "pay inquiry". Over-payments, no-pay-due's, all kinds of random stuff that was just inevitable in a paper-and-red-tape bureaucracy.
Ah yes, I remember the "good old days" of my first enlistment (87-93) how we used to joke about the "Lies and Exaggerations Statement". I never had any expenses beyond beer and cigarettes, so the "surprises" never hurt me, but I watched a lot of married guys with kids go through hell. It was so regularly F'd up that our company commander at Ft Hood had to borrow three bucks from me for lunch off base because he'd loaned all his spare money to a guy whose LES had come up ZERO with a wife and screaming baby (or was it a screaming wife and baby?) to contend with. I suppose DFAS fixed a lot of it, but I never paid much attention on my second active duty period (2001-2003)... I just came home and found a bunch of unspent money in my account.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.