Microsoft’s Money Oops!

If you’ll remember, a few months back Microsoft laid off 1400 employees as part of some cost-cutting and downsizing measures.

News today let’s us know that some of the employees affected by those layoffs were a little overpaid in their severance while others may have been underpaid. Microsoft sent letters to the affected ex-employees and asked for the overpayment of money to be sent back to them within two weeks.

I can understand why Microsoft would want this corrected, but I can’t imagine why they’d want to endure the more than likely ridicule and bad favor by the affected employees and public at large for this move.

I don’t know any of the specifics, but it doesn’t appear that every employee was overpaid since some were also underpaid. I don’t think anyone was overpaid a significant amount of money (5 figures?). If I were Microsoft, I would just absorb the loss of money and quickly take care of the underpayment to the other laid off employees.

If employees pay back the money their "reward" is an adjusted tax form so that aren’t taxed on the additional income. Again, I’m not sure about you, but in this economy I’d be keeping the money and taking the hit on the additional tax payment.

I still think the "cost" of this becoming public with Microsoft asking for the money back will "cost" them more in additional bad press, than any amount of Seinfeld ads may have done for them to try and improve their image.

This actually happened to me once with a previous employer. I was overpaid due to some kind of clerical error and when I noticed it I brought it to the attention of my manager. They let me know they were also aware of it and that I wouldn’t be asked to return the money. It was their mistake and they would pay for it. The economic times were much different then than today, but I’ve got to think if there’s any company that could absorb this accounting oops it would be Microsoft.

Image: flickr image from dslrninja