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Tom Hollander has earned a pretty penny in films and shows like Pride and Prejudice and the recent hit White Lotus, but nothing near Spider-Man's Tom Holland. So when he got a seven-figure check meant for the similarly named star, he had to give it back.
This is a payroll mistake of epic proportions, and even after years in human resources, I'm not quite sure how this kind of mistake could happen. But mistakes are common. In fact, you may have made similar mistakes (but probably not at the seven-figure level). For business owners, it's a reminder to put checks and audits in place -- but also to have compassion. It can literally happen to anyone.
I asked HR experts to share their stories of payroll mistakes under the promise of anonymity. Here are 15 true stories of payroll mixups, slightly edited for grammar and clarity.
"Back in the day, a manager made a mistake when they were correcting five days of per diem to seven days of per diem. They didn't remove the "5" and added the "7." The employee was paid for 57 days of per diem, at $50 per day, because Payroll didn't catch it. The employee was really [redacted] when the company made him give back all but seven days' worth."
"A gas station's paychecks were delivered to my personal home instead of the station. The Shell station and my house had the same street number, just different streets. Same ZIP code, so I hand-delivered their paychecks to the attendant at the gas station."
"We had two siblings working for us in the same department. I flubbed entering their information into the system and flip-flopped their direct deposit info."
"I had an exempt employee whose salary was set at an hourly rate and was entered as non-exempt. The employee received a paycheck for over $100,000 for 40 hours. The employee thought they could just move the money out of their account, and we couldn't do anything. Sadly for them, our direct deposit agreement allowed us to withdraw an erroneous check, so the person had quite a negative account balance when we pulled the money the next day and reissued a corrected check."
"I had an employee who did not understand the new W-4, and she only worked one day a week and had set her W-4 to an additional $500 per paycheck! She got zero-dollar checks for two months before we realized. She didn't even notice!"
"A co-worker in payroll had a form to change a direct deposit and edited the wrong profile through sheer lack of attention. A high-level employee's large salary went to a paid intern for about a month before anyone figured out what was happening. The intern refused to return the money; the company didn't fire him. They lost over $10,000. When this mistake was pointed out to the payroll person, she responded, 'Like you've never made a mistake.'"
"I was a new HR generalist at a national manufacturing company. I was one week in, and my co-worker/trainer quit. No one knew how to do payroll, so I was trying to fumble through a very poorly written training manual. Unfortunately, and accidentally, I was given access to every plant in the company, not just my plant, as well as access to every employee (termed and active) across the entire company and throughout its entire history. And, thanks to being new and a very bad how-to, I gave every employee across the entire company, active and termed, a $3,500 bonus for their payroll."
"I worked at a place where the CHRO attached the wrong spreadsheet to an email and accidentally sent out everyone's name and salary."
"I can't believe I'm admitting this because I get nauseous just thinking about it. In my first job as HR assistant/payroll, I mistakenly put the hours in the wrong column, and it essentially calculated 80x [employees'] biweekly pay! I was mortified, and because there was no oversight, it had been submitted, and we had to reverse a multimillion-dollar error. In those days, it was required to submit a minimum of two days before so that errors like that could be reversed. I thought my career was over before it started; luckily, they were generous and forgiving."
"Our accountant emailed everyone's paystubs to our employees. Meaning that every employee saw everyone else's hours and rates. It was a disaster."
"When I was 22, I was due a $2,000 monthly commission. I went to the ATM to withdraw money and saw the company had deposited $20,000 instead. (Epilogue: I immediately reported it, and they reversed the deposit and cut me a physical check for $2,000. But when I asked the finance colleague, 'Would it have been figured out at some point if I hadn't said anything?' she said, 'Probably not, actually.')"
"A relative received a speeding ticket in the post with their name and address on it but someone else's vehicle and license details. On following up with the local police, it turned out a fat-fingered sergeant chose the wrong person from the list of drivers when entering the offense in the computer. They had the same first and last name, same house number, and suburb, the only difference was the street name."
"I once paid a summer hire over $100,000 because I entered his rate as $1,200/hour instead of $12.00/hour."
"I forgot to enter my boss's increase a few years ago. She didn't notice for three months or so because she didn't check her paystubs. We laugh about it now, but I was mortified and thought I was getting canned for sure. She was so cool about it and said it was as much her fault for not noticing sooner. The accounting manager calculated the backpay, and we were all set."
"My dad once got a check when the manufacturing company he worked for audited its books and found it had shorted him a penny at some point. This was mailed to him at home. He was so irritated that the company wasted the time and money to issue him a check for 1¢ he vowed never to cash it so its books would never balance, LOL. I found it in his things after he passed last spring and it just made me laugh because that was so Dad."
So, mistakes happen. Get your audit procedures in place--especially before payroll actually runs. And then try to fix the error as fast as possible. But have some grace for the person who made the mistake. They aren't alone.
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
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