Comments on: Company pays man it never hired for more than 4 years

By: Deb

Deb — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:17:06 +0000

I’ve done the payroll for both large and small companies and this really goes back to the person responsible for hiring. If they notified payroll to add the person then they should have notified payroll to take them off. Rule #1 when adding a new hire to payroll….never, never, never cut a single check or add them to the system until after they’ve walked in that door.

With that said, this person should have notified the company the very first time he received a payment in error. He’s no different from the people that find ATM machines with the cards still in them and think they have the right to take what they want. Sorry…someone else making a mistake doesn’t make theft legal.

By: Jarkataionmepa

Jarkataionmepa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:39:46 +0000

I would have showed up at the office on occasion and put my name on some meaninless memos to show I was an employee. I doubt if this person goes to jail. Don’t ge me wrong, they did do the wrong thing by cashing the checks.

Here’s a suggestion – Fire the Auditors.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:20:40 +0000

My husband is a full time employee of the national guard. When he was deployed two years ago he was payed from a different system but for three months they kept paying him double – his deployment pay and his regular full time pay. I kept telling them this was wrong and please stop paying him from his full time pay. I tried to pay the money back but had to wait for the government systme to “bill us” for the error. When they finally did they wanted us to pay them back more then he was paid! Never have straightened this out. He’s been back for a year and they take the over payment out of his check little by little. I am sure we will pay back more then we received but that is bureacracy for you. And they want to run our health care!!!!!

By: Larry W. Smith

Larry W. Smith — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:40:05 +0000

The Employee who never worked was at fault for not letting the Company know that he didn’t work for them! The Supervisor of that department that he worked for should have reviewed the hours his department was charged and discovered something was in error!
Too many folks asleep at the wheel on that ship!

By: JCE

JCE — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:07:56 +0000

Wasn’t the department over budget on salaries? How small was this guy’s pay?

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:53:47 +0000

Hmmm. No one saw this man’s face for 4-1/2 years and yet he maintained his place on the payroll. I would be very interested to know how his manager and the rest of the management team explained his place on the payroll during their performance and salary reviews for those 4-1/2 years. Our management team reviewed EVERYONE’S performance twice a year to determine retention ranking and eligibility for raises, and a faceless name would not have been able to exist for that long without raising major red flags. Gross incompetence? Yes. But I’d look deeper at potential management fraud.

By: Jim D

Jim D — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:40:29 +0000

it doesn’t matter if it is a few dollars erorr at the grocery store or a payroll glitch, it is still stealing and that person who knowingly keeps the money is a dishonest person. mistakes in our personal lives and in business will happen. we are human and prone to make mistakes but honest and integrity are a personal choice. we chose what kind of person we are going to be. integrity and honesty are manifest by doing the right thing when no one is looking simply because it is the right thing to do. This man hs no integrity and is dishonest. if he will be dishonest in this situation what else will he cheat on?

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:56:42 +0000

R.B…. Very good points! I agree that most people would/should do the right thing and report it to the proper department. As you stated, it would not necessarily be the “employee’s” of the HR/Payroll department that missed the mistake. It very well may have been not properly reported and therefore was undiscovered until an audit was performed. In fact 4 1/2 years after the fact it would be extremely difficult to follow the steps all the way through to identify who was to blame. However, as

Deb… stated the directors/executives/managers…. someone, should have know if they were properly watching the numbers. When you do this for a living and you are use to seeing certain things, it becomes second nature to notice that something is incorrect or out of place.

Almost like when someone slightly moves something in your home, or when someone changes a hair style; you may not know exactly what it is at first but you know that something is off, and if you search hard enough it will not take you long at all to discover it! In just a basic report, a department head should notice an increase in labor (which is typically one of largest expenses for a company, and most closely monitored) and to notice labor jump up and knowing what payroll should have been, that should ring a bell; you would think.

By: R. B.

R. B. — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:08:20 +0000

Most people would be ethical enough to let the company know about the error. The fact that he didn’t tells me they’re much better off without him.

Mistakes happen and a lot of payroll departments in big companies are isolated enough that if no one tells them about a change, they would never know. They don’t personally interact with every employee in the company, so they wouldn’t know the person wasn’t in that department without the paperwork telling them to terminate / remove him. Unless it’s a small organization where payroll people should have known, I can see how this could easily happen. For him to have kept quiet and taken all that money is nothing but criminal and I hope he is prosecuted and convicted accordingly.

By: Deb

Deb — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:09:45 +0000

Years ago as a new Manager of HR for a small manufacturing company I was overwhelmed with work. I was told that “HR pay records were incorrect” and that Payroll (Finance dept.) had correct info (which is also what managers were receiving in their monthly expense reports). After six months I came up for air and had my new staff conduct an audit of Offer letters from Personnel files, HR system records and payroll record. I discovered HR had been correct and it was Payroll who was overpaying and underpaying staff! I also found it interesting that the Directors were not seeing the overpayment in their reports.