Wow.

Submitted by nduanetesh on Tue, 02/24/2009 - 1:28am

I don't know where you people got your sense of right and wrong, but these comments are pretty seriously screwed up.

 

When someone accidentally gives you money to which you are not entitled, the correct response is NOT "Fuck you.  You made a mistake.  It's my money now."

 

The correct response IS, "You're right.  I'm not entitled to this money. You made a mistake, as all people sometimes do, and it's only right that I return what is not rightfully mine. [gives money back]"

 

If I was one of the former employees, I WOULD return the money, because my parents taught me the difference between right and wrong.  

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Will Microsoft give back the

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 7:37pm

Will Microsoft give back the money that some of the Ex-Employees already paid back to Microsoft as a result of this letter? I hope they do that is if any Ex-Employee made any payments to Microsoft.

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Here is a tiny quote from the URL I posted. It's pasted below.

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 7:29pm

Quote "Microsoft U-turn over redundancy pay gaffe

Software titan reverses position after overpaying some staff during recent layoffs

• Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 February 2009 02.20 GMT
• Article history

Technology giant Microsoft has been forced to make an embarrassing climb-down after it asked some former employees to return part of their redundancy payments.

In what the company has described as an "administrative error", a handful of workers were given around $5,000 (£3,450) more than the severance pay they were entitled to after being made redundant last month.

Despite the fact that the company initially requested that they return the extra cash, however, it has now said they can keep the money after a storm of protest online.

In a statement, Microsoft said that it had mishandled the affair and would no longer be chasing repayment.

"Last week, 25 former Microsoft employees were informed that they were overpaid as a part of their severance payments from the company," it said.

"This was a mistake on our part. We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner. We are reaching out to those impacted to relay that we will not seek any payment from those individuals."

The gaffe came after 1,400 workers were given their marching orders in January – the first major job cuts in Microsoft's long history, and part of the software titan's plan to reduce its staffing levels by 5,000 posts next year. Most employees affected were given a 12-week severance package as part of the deal.

However, news that the company was asking for the excess cash to be returned spread across the internet last weekend, after one letter demanding repayment was published online.

According to those documents, the letters claimed that an "inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment," and asked for repayment to be made within 14 days.

Response to the news was varied, but some criticised Microsoft for being hard-hearted during a time of financial hardship for those affected.

"Are you kidding me?" wrote one commenter on the blog Techcrunch, where the news first erupted. "Screw you… what goes around comes around."

One Seattle employment lawyer even suggested that Microsoft might not have been legally able to demand the money back if the error was not immediately obvious to laid-off workers.

"It may depend on whether or not it was obvious that there was an error," Jill Pugh told ComputerWorld. "A lot of the people laid off were salaried employees, who often don't know exactly what they make in a week minus taxes."

In the end, though, Microsoft executives decided that swallowing the $125,000 slip-up would be easier than suffering from bad public relations.

"I don't think it's worthy of us asking them to make that payment back to us," Microsoft senior vice president Lisa Brummell told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer."End Quote

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Hey everyone you can quit

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 7:26pm

Hey everyone you can quit hating on Microsoft. They have changed their tune rather quickly. Here is an article http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/24/microsoft-severance-gaffe This URL was posted on my Twitter feed from somone I was following I guess. 

 

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Sounds like microsoft...

Submitted by jeff60607 on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 6:06pm

Sounds like microsoft...

Normal
0

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

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mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}

In the mean time, I just came across two helpful articles on
2008 taxes.

 

http://www.recessioninfocenter.com/2008_tax_tips_for_recession.html

 

http://recessioninfocenter.com/Taxes_in_recession.html

 

 

 

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"Letter? What letter? I

Submitted by horzo on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 3:21pm

"Letter? What letter? I didn't get a letter."

Please, what a joke. You'd be an idiot to give the money back. What's MS going to do; take these folks to court? Not a chance. The correct response here is no response.

 

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Well did the ex employees

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 2:39pm

Well did the ex employees know what they were supposed to get for their severance pay? If they knew that they were supposed to get a certain ammount but got alot more then they should have double checked with the company. 

Banks make misstakes all time where they accidently deposit $500,000 dollars into your account when you only deposited $500 dollars. You will goto jail if you withdraw that extra $499,500 dollars. Perhaps the same precident can be used here.

I do side with the ex employees though and I think that Microsoft should forget about the money and definately pay those employees that were underpaid their severance.

This is a good time for Microsoft to go public with a press conferance and let the world know that they will support their layed off employees. In hard times like these a multibillion dollar company can really raise the moral of the country just that little bit.

Microsoft can afford to offer millions of dollars in scolarships every year, they can afford to donate to hundreds of organizations heck and they can't afford this? They could have given $50,000 to each of it's seperated employees and the company wouldn't have noticed it. Perhaps it hurt the company because they weren't financially prepared for it. Sure it's a multi billion dollar company but they still have to keep their books straight and follow a budget stratagy but I just can't imaging this being a hit that Microsoft couldn't recover from very quickly.

But then again it's not my money and who am I to tell someone else how to spend their own money.I really have no right. If it was my money I would want it back but then again I'm poor but it's really no difference. 

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How 'bout that?

Submitted by Wildebeast on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 1:03pm

MS completely skipped the 6-24 month period, where they say stupid things like "this error is in the extreme minority, probably due to the individuals' abusive use..."

** Maybe they danced clockwise around the beheaded, live chicken ---when it was supposed to be counter-clockwise? **

I'm sorry. I just can't stop laughing... :D

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Sure, they can ask...

Submitted by Tekzel on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 12:53pm

But my guess is they have no legal standing to require it.  If this is the case, the ex-employees should tell them to go stick their heads in a hole.  I know I would.

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Here's a new acronym for microsoft:

Submitted by Zazubovich on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 11:48am

howaboat FOAD?  Talk about adding insult to injury!

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I have to side 100% with

Submitted by PhelanPKell on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 11:18am

I have to side 100% with the ex-employee's.

Fact of the matter is, as far as we know, those employee's served the company to the required standards, and only got canned because they drew the short straw being the lowest guys on the totem pole.

This act seems to reflect Microsoft's general attitude towards customers as well. They want something from you, but you have to fight for something from them.

Furthermore, it's not the responsability of those layed-off employee's to do the companies accounting. If Microsoft made a mistake, they need to bite the bullet and stop being greedy. I'd put even money down that the combined excess received by those employee's costs less than one flight on Whats-his-faces private jet across town.

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Makes sense

Submitted by Phated1 on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 11:11am

It makes sense that they would ask for the money back, if you think about it there is a potential for alot of money loss here.

They dont specify how much they overpaid these employees, however if you think about the math even a small amount would add up.  Say the number of employees they paid was 1000.  and say they overpaid those employees by 500$.  Thats $500,000 right out the window.  If they overpaid them by $1,000, thats a million out the window, so it really depends on the sum that they overpaid.

Also, say employee A was talking with Employee B, they both used to have the same salary but A ended up getting a larger severance than B.  Thats a possible potential for a lawsuit right there imo.  So Microsoft may be not even be expecting to get paid back at all.  They may just be covering their ass.

Just my thoughts.

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you'd think that MS would

Submitted by AndyYankee17 on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 10:29am

you'd think that MS would rather give up the money then take the bad press

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It is complete and utter

Submitted by I Jedi on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 10:39am

It is complete and utter bullshit to expect that your ex-employees should be made to give back some of the money that you gave them because of an error you made on your behalf. It is not the responsibility of the ex-workers who were affected by this to return your lost profits back over to you. The only people at fault are the people who accidentally made this error in judgment, not the people who so blindly thought the money was all theirs because of their recent layoff.

If I were a worker at Microsoft and got laid off, got a large sum of money for my loss, and then told to return some of that overpaid money to Microsoft for their mistake, I wouldn’t do it. To go to court over this would cost Microsoft more money than it would be to get a single past employee’s overpaid money back, I believe. All I can say for sure, however, is that Microsoft made the mistake on their behalf and should learn to make part with their losses and give the extra benefits to the ex-employees who are now without jobs.

I don’t condone anyone to fight Microsoft in a court battle, nor do I suggest anyone who was affected by any of this to take my ideas/talking into consideration when dealing with what Microsoft wants now. This is simply my outlook on the current circumstances.

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pshh if i was one of those

Submitted by comptech08 on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 10:00am

pshh if i was one of those employees i wouldnt pay it back.  That is microsofts fault.  First off they fired the people leaving them with no job.  The paid them compensation for it, but now want some of it back?  Microsoft is loaded with billions of dollars, i think if they just let it go they will not be affected by there mistake at all.

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Its a shitty situation for

Submitted by shutout5591 on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 9:58am

Its a shitty situation for everybody, but Microsoft has a right to ask for the money back. Keyword: ASK. They shouldn't press, they are pretty damn rich...

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 Of course they shouldnt

Submitted by cfmwarren on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 9:54am

 Of course they shouldnt get their money back, its their mistake

 This sounds like something microsoft would do.

First not having their own site work with their own browser and then this....

AMD Athlon X2 5400+ OC'd 3 GHz

2 9600 GTs OC'd 700

4GB DDR2-800 OC'd 870

600W Mach 1

X-Fi Professional Fatal1ty Ed

 

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<twirls moustache>

Submitted by punditguy on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 9:50am

Now I'll have to redo my Silicon Valley edition of Monopoly.

 "Microsoft Error in Your Favor. Pay $200."

___________________________________________

Preferred boot, but will give this Maximum PC thing a try.

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