On Saturday I published a blog post about how Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) wanted laid off employees to return part of their severance package.  This led to some highly negative P.R. so the company backtracked.  Lisa Brummel of Microsoft H.R. said that the company “thought it didn’t make sense for us to continue on the path we were on.”  Twenty-five workers were overpaid and twenty were underpaid, added Brummel.

The employees that were overpaid received on average of about $4,000-$5,000 in extra pay.  When a company makes an accounting mistake, it makes sense to recover the money but Brummel admitted that this was an extraordinary case.  One time Brummel was overpaid and she wrote a check to Microsoft.