Postal Service Accidentally Delivers $160 Million To Employees

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the please-don't-spend-it dept

Talk about a computer error. The US Postal Service was supposed to pay a bonus of approximately $4,000 each to 1,900 former managers. However, someone set up their payment software to read from the wrong list of employees – one that has 76,000 employees. The mistake was caught a few days later, but not before 41,000 erroneous bonus checks went out, meaning an overpayment of over $160 million. As you might imagine, the USPS is trying to get the word out to employees not to spend the money, because it won’t be there for very long.