You’re fired — and you owe us money

Posted by: Adam Pasick

Taking back banker bonuses — known as “clawbacks” — has been mooted in the U.S. bailout of the financial industry, but Microsoft briefly broke some new ground this week by introducing the concept to severance payments.


Citing an accounting error, Microsoft notified laid off employees that they would need to give back part of their severance pay. The company graciously offered to accept either checks or money orders.

“An inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment in severance pay by Microsoft,” a letter obtained by the blog TechCrunch reads. “We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.”

Late on Monday, the software giant realized that its request may have seemed just a teensy bit insensitive, and dropped the “clawback” request.

“This was a mistake on our part,” said a Microsoft spokesman. “We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner.”

If you lost your job and your former employer asked for some of the severance money back, what would your response be? (Reminder: this is a family-friendly website, so keep it clean!)

source