A Lot Of Fuss For Twelve Bucks

My company has a program where employees can buy products at a significant discount. One time they had an event at our site where we could try stuff out and then order what we wanted. The very next day the program changed to increase the discount so they refunded the difference in prices to all of us who had ordered at the event, which was quite nice.

My stuff all came except one part, which turned out to have been discontinued, so they canceled the order of that part and refunded the price to me — the original price I paid, not the lowered price. This netted me about an extra $12.

Being an honest guy, I asked how I could pay back the extra $12. After several weeks of back and forth, I ended up in a teleconference with my manager and two local site lawyers “live” and two lawyers at the corporate HQ via the phone. They discussed this for — I kid you not — almost a full hour before deciding I should make a payment of the $12 to the local finance people. Those people were quite confused when I made the payment to them and tried to explain why.

Later, my manager told me, “If anything like this happens again, just keep quiet.”