Posted on 02/22/2009 8:33:55 AM PST by Askwhy5times
Um, yeah, I’m not giving the company who just fired me some of the money they voluntarily gave me.
Hmmmm...
1. MS screwed up the payments. Stupid.
2. It is a PR mistake to try to fix it. Stupid.
3. Should ex-employees return the money? Of course. It doesn’t belong to them. That’s called honesty. Being laid off is no justification for theft.
From the letter, it appears that an accounting function error was made. I see nothing wrong in asking for it to be corrected, if that was, in fact, the case.
If there were an error on your 1099, W-2 or whatever, you’d want it to be corrected too, wouldn’t you?
Really, it’s not a matter of the money, it’s correcting an error that could come back to haunt them and the employee in the future.
I thought Microsoft was in Washington State? I forget, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t in North Dakota. I would definitely check the scamminess of this before I did anything like ragging on Microsoft (there are plenty of other reasons for that) or thinking of sending back the money.
MSFT should just blame the mistake on a bug in the software. Nobody will doubt it.
nice to see how microsoft cares about the American worker..
hahahahahahaha!
i was thinking that this just has to be from The Onion...
I think the coldest action of this type was a metroplex PD that asked the widow of an officer killed in the line of duty to return the balance of his duty pay for the part of the shift he didn’t work.
Looks pretty light on the details, wouldn’t you agree? No mention of how many were affected, or how much they were accidentally overpaid?
Meanwhile there are reports this is actually the first time Microsoft has EVER laid off anyone in the US, while IBM does it constantly, yet we semingly never hear a peep of complaint about that for some reason.
Meanwhile there are reports this is actually the first time Microsoft has EVER laid off anyone in the US, while IBM does it constantly, yet we semingly never hear a peep of complaint about that for some reason.
I think the point of interest of the story is not the layoffs which as you say are pretty unremarkable these days, but instead that they would add insult to injury by asking for money back from employees that they just unemployed. That I'm sure you would agree has a bit of newsworthy quality to it. I'm pretty sure I'd be chuckling at IBM if they did the same thing.
Without a single detail of how many, or how much they were overpaid, it's hard to say how deplorable this is. If it's 2 employees, that were overpaid $250,000 each, then it's not unusual they would ask for that back, is it? I'm not suggesting that's the case, because I doubt that it is, but without the details no one knows. My response was to the poster inferring Microsoft is horrible to US employees, when considering this is the first time they've ever laid any employees in the US off at all that's hardly the case, plus the fact there's no details regarding how much they overpaid these folks. You're welcome to disagree but I'd say I'm being very reasonable, while others just love to bash Microsoft even when they have a good history of never laying anyone in the US off, and there's no specific details to this issue yet either.
ping
I remember quitting a firm once and the company accidentally overpaid me by 2 weeks. I returned the money.
“My response was to the poster inferring Microsoft is horrible to US employees”
Actually my point was MS is no better than any other employer, not that they are worse..
you were quit and not laid off.
Severance checks are not usually based on ‘two weeks’ pay. The laid these folks off gave them a check and a boot in the butt (in a year when their profit margin grew mind you) and then came back and asked for some of the severance back..
What does Microsoft’s ability to pay have to do with the market salary? Your post makes so sense from a business standpoint.
Doesn't look that way when reading it. But if you want to change your argument, who else is doing something like this?
Microsoft aims to 'Elevate America'
Microsoft is announcing on Sunday a job training effort aimed at giving technical skills to as many as 2 million Americans over the next three years. The most significant part of the program, in which Microsoft is offering free certification and other technical training, is being done in a phased approach, starting with Washington state. "Millions of individuals don't have the technology skills needed in today's economy. Through Elevate America, we want to help workers get the skills they need to succeed," Pamela Passman, Microsoft's VP for corporate affairs, said in a statement.
What competition does it have (say, from overseas) who is succeeding by undercutting it on price?
Look up Microsoft's gross profitability and net profit margin, and compare to other members of the Fortune 500.
Cheers!
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