REDMOND, Wash. – A spokesperson for Microsoft blamed hackers for the company’s severance pay blunders, which resulted in some laid-off workers receiving too much severance pay while others received too little.
“A weakness in our payroll program—or else in our calculator—was exploited by hackers at some point during the holiday season,” the spokesperson reported. “We expect to have a patch in place by the time we lay off more employees in a few months.”
Meanwhile, according to a letter obtained by Postcards from the Pug Bus, Microsoft is asking an undisclosed number of the 1,400 employees it laid off on January 22 to return their windfalls within thirty days or face “significant” penalties.
“We are writing to inform you that because of the activities of hackers a payroll error occurred that resulted in your severance check being larger—in amount and in size—than it should have been,” wrote Microsoft.
“We scarcely have to remind you that the excess portion of the payment is not legally yours. Therefore, we ask you to return that overpayment to us within thirty days of the receipt of this letter or face significant interest penalties. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience these hackers may have caused you, and we truly hope we do not have to take legal steps to recoup our money.”
Although Microsoft has remained tight lipped about the amounts it overpaid its former workers, one worker who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she “suspected” the $750,000 severance check she had received from Microsoft was “kind of generous—and, like, a whole lot bigger than the average check.”
As for the underpaid workers, Microsoft promised to “make up the difference” between the severance they received and the severance they should have received “in due course on a case by case basis, beginning with those employees who used the fewest sick days.”
In other news, sources close to the family of the eleven-year-old Pennsylvania boy who shot and killed his father’s fiance say that a love triangle may have led to the tragic shooting.
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