"I Discovered My Boss Was Overpaying Me (They want $17k now)"

A physician who recently returned from maternity leave discovered that her employer had been overpaying her by roughly $1,000 per month for a year and a half — a total of about $17,000. The error happened when she reduced her schedule from full-time to 95 percent effort, but her pay never changed. She brought the mistake to her employer's attention, and now they want the money back by the end of the fiscal year. She and her husband, who together earn about $420,000 annually, were two weeks away from paying off $80,000 in non-mortgage debt when this landed. She called in for advice on how to handle the upcoming meeting — and whether she should talk to a lawyer first.

The asymmetry of who made the mistake

The core of the advice hinges on a simple but easy-to-miss distinction: the employee did not steal, deceive, or even notice the overpayment. She brought the error to her employer's attention. The employer made the clerical mistake. As the host put it, "You didn't steal the money. You didn't deceive anyone. Quite the opposite. You're the one that brought it to their attention."