Ever had a paycheck that was SUBSTANTIALLY bigger....... by mistake?

[tvguy]

Has your paycheck ever been mistakenly made out for substantially more than it was supposed to be for? I had a co-worker whose paycheck was $120,000 more than it was supposed to be. Thankfully, he did not have direct deposit, so he just handed the Payroll clerk the check and she handed him a replacement check in the correct amount.

What reminded me of this was watching one of those afternoon Judge shows. Employer suing employee who was overpaid by a large amount. It was the last paycheck of the year and the final paycheck as the employee had left the employer. The mistake meant the employee would have a several month delay in getting a tax refund, until IRS corrected his income. Employee did not want to return the money until the employer agreed to let him keep an amount, temporarily, equal to what his tax refund would have been, basically float him a loan until the mistake was fixed. The mistake was not the employers, but with the payroll company he used. The Judges ruled the employee had to return the money but could keep an amount equal to the tax refund until the tax refund came. The Judge advised the employer may want to sue the payroll company for the mistake.
.

 

[disneychrista]

No. If I did it would be my own mistake since I am the one who runs payroll.

I have accidentally miss keyed someone's time but the error was caught before payroll was finalized.

 

[Lord Manhammer]

I work for the state so my Paycheck can sometimes be goofy. But whenever there is an issue I've brought it up to my payroll department with no issues.

 

[amcnj]

No, I can’t recall ever receiving a payroll check that was for more than I was due. I have had some that were less. These occurred at hourly jobs where they submitted less hours than I had actually worked, and just added those hours to the following pay period total.

 

[Disneylover99]

Substantially lower - yes!
Substantially higher - unfortuanately, no.

 

[Minnesota!]

Nothing that big, but I didn't read well and didn't notice that our benefits only come out of 24/26 checks, so 2x this year I had a noticeably larger check since my dental and vision and medical was not taken from the check. Nice little bonus for my forgetful brain

 

[kdonnel]

I don't think my paycheck has ever had an error in my entire working life.

Probably just jinxed myself.

 

[cincystamper]

Yes, once. I was going on short-term leave for back surgery and my paycheck after leave started was doubled. They caught it a few weeks later and reached out to me about how to fix it. They reduced my remaining paychecks for the year equally to repay what I was overpaid so I wouldn't take a big one-time hit. I hadn't spent any of the extra money because I noticed the mistake right away, but they couldn't figure out a way for me to give it back so this was the solution we came up with.

 

[lovesmurfs]

Sort of. When my husband was deployed to Afghanistan, the university he taught for kept paying him. I think it was about 6 months before they realized. I truly thought they were being nice to us. Silly me.

I wound up paying back about $30,000 in the midst of his deployment. Pissed me off a bit.

 

[bholbert81]

Working in payroll I have accidentally overpaid and underpaid before. It can definitely happen, never been off my thousands of dollars though!! WOW

 

[ronandannette]

I confess that after 17 years at the same job, with digital deposits the whole time, it’s totally not routine for me to ever look at my actual pay stubs. I’m almost positive I’ve never, at any job, had any payroll error.

 

[WDWEPCOT]

Nope I’m the person who does payroll would like to keep my job

 

[KPeterso]

Yes - at a retail store in college. I received a check for about double what it should have been, so several hundred dollars. I opened my check at lunch and stared at it puzzled about it. And then walked over to the HR person and said this just did not look right at all (between the $ amount and the number of hours worked). HR took the check and it impacted a very small number of people (most of the floaters who rotated departments as needed), so they pulled all those checks. I had one other people in that group corner me about pointing out the error and costing them money. Uh - it was not yours to begin with since the check was wrong.

 

[SPLzero]

As one of my side roles at my job I am the timekeeper. Being the timekeeper if there is any issues with pay the employees always come to me. . We have compressed schedules so holidays sometimes land on the previous paycheck. You would be surprised how many people complain that their paycheck was short but not bring up that they got overpaid the prior paycheck.

 

[Kitty 34]

As a sub I used to get paid by the days so now and then they forgot a day so I got sub pay not over pay.

 

[tvguy]

Nothing that big, but I didn't read well and didn't notice that our benefits only come out of 24/26 checks, so 2x this year I had a noticeably larger check since my dental and vision and medical was not taken from the check. Nice little bonus for my forgetful brain

I always looked forward to those checks. I had a manager try to get money back from me when he felt I had been overpaid. He noticed it when he was reviewing his budget. I was salaried, working under a personal services contract. Instead of overtime they shifted me to what they called "premium pay" if I had to stay and Produce an extra newscast. Usually that entailed me staying 6 hours over, which would have been about $225 overtime pay when I was hourly. The premium pay rate was a flat $150. One day they had me stay 2 hours late to Produce the 4 local news updates in the Today show. I asked the Payroll clerk how to put that on my time sheet. I considered those cut ins one show, so I was due $150. She looked at my contract and said "no, those are 4 shows". So she paid me $600 for staying 2 hours over.
The manager went to the payroll clerk and demanded she get that money back. She just looked at him and told him to change the wording in the contracts because the way he had worded it, I was owed the $600. He had come from Texas, and as many know, labor laws in California are far more restrictive.

 

[Darcy03231]

No, but i once made a $150 deposit into my checking account but the teller keyed it in as $1500. I noticed it when I got my next bank statement (long before the internet and online banking). I went to the bank to with the statement to report it and they wanted me to jump through hoops to give the money back! I said nope, not my problem, I'm not going to fix your mistake for you (paperwork in triplicate, etc.). Kept the account open, never touched the money, and approximately three years later I get a notice that they had an internal audit and realized their mistake and were deducting $1350 from my account.

 

[kdonnel]

She looked at my contract and said "no, those are 4 shows". So she paid me $600 for staying 2 hours over.

My first job out of college I was hourly and on call.

The on call rules were that if you had to come in you got paid for a minimum of 2 hours. There was one horrible weekend where I would get called in, go in and fix the issue in minutes, and before I could get home I would get called in again. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a very profitable weekend where I earned more than double my normal weekly pay in two days.

 

[dcassetta]

One time my direct deposit was $2000 more than it should have been, which was a mystery as I am on salary. I reported it to HR and my next check was reduced by the same amount.

 

[tvguy]

My first job out of college I was hourly and on call.

The on call rules were that if you had to come in you got paid for a minimum of 2 hours. There was one horrible weekend where I would get called in, go in and fix the issue in minutes, and before I could get home I would get called in again. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a very profitable weekend where I earned more than double my normal weekly pay in two days.

Yeah, when I worked in a Union job, call back was 4 hours pay. I got off work at 7 am and I get a call at 7:30 am saying I needed to come back in because the 7 am person didn't show up and they weren't answering their phone. I get back to work at 8 am and the 7 am person walks in behind me. She was surprised at the fuss, but it was the Monday after the Spring time change and she had forgotten to reset her clocks. She didn't even know she was late for work.
So I drove 13 miles to work, spent 5 minutes there, drove 13 miles home and got 4 hours pay.