Chilean worker disappears after getting 300 times his normal salary in payroll error
We all think it would be a dream come true to get a paycheck wildly higher than our regular salary but then you face the situation where technically, if you don't return the overpaid amount, you are now a criminal. Well that was a bit too much for one man to resist after payroll screwed up and paid him more than $180,000 for the month of May.
src
There have been multiple movies made about something along these lines and one of my favorites is Office Space which if you haven't seen it I think you really should. The real-world situation I am referring to is not at all like this because this particular guy didn't have any part in the overpayment. He simply opened his paycheck which was normally less than $600 a month and found that he had been paid 30 years worth of wages all at once.
Initially, he alerted his manager of the error but the manager's lackadaisical attitude towards the matter resulted in the worked simply being told to go to his bank and return the money on his own. After days of not coming back to work at Consorcio Industrial de Alimentos and was ghosting everyone that tried to contact him.
His name has not been released to the press but according to reports his lawyer sent a letter of resignation on his behalf. Apparently, the worker seems to think that he is going to get away with this and while I am not familiar with the laws of Chile, I have a difficult time believing that this is just going to be swept under the rug by his employers.
src
What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? I have had a paycheck error many years ago in the past and I wouldn't say that my bosses were as active in celebrating my honesty as I would have liked them to be. I think I could have simply deposited the check and claimed ignorance but then again, the error in my case wasn't nearly $200,000. It was small enough that I don't think anyone would have noticed unless there was an extensive audit many years down the line.
