What would you do if you got overpaid?

Nurses General Nursing

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The night of pay, most of the staff look up their paystubs online. I looked mine up last night and noticed that I was over paid by 1500 dollars. For a moment I daydreamed about what I could do with the extra money.:cheeky: Ofcourse, I never had any real intention of not notifying payroll.

I showed my co-workers and to my surprise many of them advised me to not say anything. In fact, only one agreed that I was doing the right thing.

I thought things like this would be a no brainer but apparently not.

Well, I went to pay roll this am and got it taken care of. The lady working in payroll thanked me for my honestly and said eventually they do found out and it would not have looked good if I didn't say anything.

So morale of the story.... if you ever get over paid fess up. Although I don't think there is anything wrong with having a few short moments to fantasize about having money.

I go along with reporting, but I would not bother till the next "business" day.

Saying that an employer has the right to turn around and fire me for not "reporting" such an error in my favor is absurd. What right do they have to say "I should have noticed"? It's not my responsibility to go over my paystub every two weeks to make sure they didn't overpay.

I'm sorry but it IS our responsibility to be sure your pay check or automatic deposit is the correct amount.

YES, the employer CAN sue the employee for the return of the overage amount in the employee's checking account. Once .10c of the incorrect amount hits your account you have technically committed embezzlement IF you don't notify your employer's payroll. Keeping it in your account, intending to return it on Monday, can count as embezzlement too.

Absurd? Too much trouble to return? Being honest isn't worth it for $5.00? Too much trouble to return $5.00?

I hardly think so. It's called basic honesty and morally and ethically what is what an honest, moral, ethical person would do.

I would contact the payroll person as soon as her/his office was open. I'd dream a lot in between.....:)

Specializes in Leadership, Psych, HomeCare, Amb. Care.

If you know you were overpaid, you need to report it. You'd complain if you noticed you were $10 short, wouldn't you?

Whether or not you notice your check is wrong, is another matter. With shift dif, weekend diff, rotating shifts and varying hours, your check may vary a lot. However if it's a large amount, like $1500 for example, it is reasonable to expect that you would notice it. if your pay was way off and not reported, you may not be fired, but it would look suspicious to say the least. I'm salaried, and don't know what my actual take home is after all my deductions, but I do know the first two digits, and would notice if all of a sudden that was different.

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I go along with reporting, but I would not bother till the next "business" day.

I'm sure that would be fine. I had just moved to Chicago, which was about 1000 miles from home and since the partner I called had never practiced law there, he gave me a conservative answer. Plus which, it was late Friday afternoon and if I didn't report it then, it would be three days until I could report it. He said many embezzlers embezzle at week's end and have the weekend to flee with their loot.

One of my friends took a look at her card one pay period and almost fainted-- it had 999 hours of PTO on it, almost six months of full-time work. What to do? Her paychecks were normal, just the PTO was erroneous. We all decided that they'd probably catch it sooner or later so we told her just to keep an eye on it. They never did. So after about a year she started taking it, a bit at a time, for an extra couple of days of a month or some vaca time here and there. When we quit we got pur PTO paid off at our rate of pay at the time of resignation, so a few years later she got a nice bonus when she moved away. None of us every begrudged it to her :)

I know this is an old post, but I have to say that this is appalling.

I know there are people who will argue about gray areas, but that is theft, plain and simple.

Honestly, I would never want a nurse so lacking in integrity to ever take care of me.

I work in a LTC facility. When I started I was trained M-F. There was a weekday rate and a weekend option rate. If you worked during the week and picked up a weekend shift, you would receive $3 more an hour. I went to weekend option after my training was completed.

Three months in, I was calculating my paycheck and realized I was getting $3 more an hour than I should have been. I called hr and notified them. She changed my pay to where I wouldn't get the $3 an hr anymore. I called everyday for a week before it was changed. They told me it wasn't worth it to them to take back what they had overpaid me and to just keep it! (I had also talked to corporate about the issue).

A few weeks later I was paid for 20 hours of pto. As weekend option, I didn't accrue pto time. I once again called hr, the scheduler and corporate. They all swore it was my time. The scheduler said they had all discussed it and couldn't remember why it was my time but that it was. They refused to deduct it from my paycheck.

I also work a lot of overtime or sometimes get out late so I can't keep track of how much I should be paid each week. I have 7 different pay rates on one check. I do however always check the pay rate to make sure I am not being overpaid.

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