The more you embezzle the less they care to catch you. Big money 101.

When I was discharged from the Navy I started getting checks in the mail. The crazy part was my first 2 initials were JG, so I was not only getting checks I wasn't supposed to, I was getting Lieutenant Junior Grade rate pay. I called the recruiter in town, sent the checks back, and they just kept returning them to me. I kept them, uncashed, in a little gun safe.
One Saturday morning after a hard night of partying I was watching cartoons with my kids and someone rang the doorbell. I open the door to a Chief Petty Officer, 2 MP's, and a sheriff's deputy. They said I owed x amount of money to the Navy and they were there to collect. I went to the safe, and got the checks, and handed them over. They seemed shocked. They said I was the only person that day that they didn't have to arrest for embezzling money. What dumb ass thinks the military isn't going to come looking for their money? Apparently quite a few. They arrested 20 some guys that day. It says as much about greed as it does about the military's incompetence.

My bank did something similar. I had 9¢ in a closed savings account. They closed the account as dividends paid out so they got stuck in there, and I had no access. Over I supposed about 5 years now they’ve sent me 1-2 letters every month informing me that my balance is 9¢. I finally called them a month or two ago to get my 9¢. Explained it to them, and how I felt it was really stupid that they spent more on the mail then the money they were reminding me about.

Told me I could pick it up at a bank, or they’d mail me a check. I had them mail me the check.

You should fuck up again. Show your CO this entire thread and the "fan reactions". I'll be waiting for your TIFU tomorrow as well.

We have a looooong way to go.

It's because you're a poor fucking normie like the rest of us. Get in line.

You’re lucky, I had per diem for a month long training det that wasn’t turned off. I deployed a month after that on an aircraft carrier. I wasn’t checking mypay because I was deployed and didn’t really have any expenses. All my stuff was in storage and my buddy was watching my car. 6 months later they figured it out and just decided to take all $4000 out of the next two paychecks. No warning, I also wasn’t informed that I had the option of paying it back in installments. Thank god I was deployed and had saved about $12k by that point. If I had been at home with all of my bills I would have been totally screwed.

I am of the opinion that if you are overpaid then they should eat that cost and you shouldn't be responsible for it. They sent you a legal check or legally direct deposited your pay to your account. Their screw ups should not be your responsibility.

It's a paperless^armyarmy

I got a mail about how we owe them -2 cents. We overpaid and got a mail constantly about this.

is it laziness? stubbornness? or bit of both? or something else that leads to such slow adaption to the times?

I lost a paycheck to DFAS, they said I should've ate at the chow hall and didn't believe me when I told them I didn't. I even got a loan so they could take it all in one check, and had to pay that loan back the next pay period.

I was overpaid around 15 dollars a paycheck for 3 years.

They didn't send me a letter or anything. Just took my paycheck

I'm not Army, but AF. They sent me an email saying I was overpaid. Included the date it would be withheld from a future paycheck, and where to go if payments needed to be made. I'm kinda sad I didn't get a letter. :(

Lucky they didnt account for inflation

As someone who was also in the military and understanding the situation writing "heer yore 2 cent, I kunted et al myself. I lobe me job." Is completely baffling to me. Thank you for your service regardless, but what are you doing even if you don't even have respect for the institution your protecting?

Huh, my job paid everyone's expenses twice, so they just withheld the amount from your expense reimbursement the next few months until each person got back to even.

Different strokes for different blokes I s'pose

Those letters from dfas specifically state that if you don't go to your local finance office within 30(?) Days, then the entire amount owed will be withdrawn from the next check. It's to give you an opportunity to set up a payment plan if taking all if the money back will be an issue for you. OP could have ignored the letter and let them take the 2 cents.

That is actually how it was done for the 12 years i was in the military, so i have no idea what would have changed in the last year.

Why didn't you put it in internal mail?

That's strange. I don't work for Uncle Sam but my company recently overpaid me by essentially a full paycheck (it sure looked mighty strange to see my net pay higher than my gross...), and when I contacted payroll they just withheld half of that amount on each of my next two checks.

I work in retail and I've had customers waste 30 minutes or more to battle it out for 5-10 cents due to some kind of error. I think some people's time is just worth nothing to them. It's the only resource we all have in an absolutely fixed quantity. Edit: i should have been more specific that these are issues with signage being missed or adjacent signs being misinterpreted not actual point of sale problems.

Where do you work where people are allowed to yell at you for a quarter of a work day? I call shenanigans

[deleted]

I think I would have just paid the 17 cents myself and be done with it. Is some sort of rule / law that doesn't allow that? After about 2 minutes of a conversation over 17 cents I would have said fuck it. Its taken care of.

What's up with all the checks, mails and manual payments in this thread? Is all of that normal in the US?

In the Netherlands we pay bills automatically or through the internet. The government has online forms for everything as well. People only use snail mail for birthday and christmas cards here.

[deleted]

I know someone who's father received a promotion and a raise. He thought the raise was really high so he went to his boss and asked for clarification that they really were giving him such a sizable raise. The boss assured him that it was correct, and that he deserved it. So he went home with this first paycheck and immediately payed off some debts and bought some things they had needed. A week later the people in payroll contacted him, informing him that they fucked up. He was paid twice a month, their bills were set up to be paid in different parts of the month. They weren't struggling, but they didn't have any extra, nor savings. I imagine you can see where this is going. The payroll department told he wouldn't be getting a second check that month. They couldn't pay their bills. I don't remember how it ended up working out, but it was a shitty two weeks for them.

My dad once told me a joke: a man was overpaid by a $100 and he didn't say anything. The next paycheck he was underpaid by $100 and he went and complained bitterly about it. When asked by the company if he wasn't overpaid by $100 the previous check he replied, 'I am willing to overlook a mistake one time, but I am not willing to overlook a mistake two times in a row'

Meh, people like us waste our time on reddit ;)

The debt shows up on your LES for a specific amount of time and then they will just take the money. If you actually check your LES, then you can see the debt and go to the finance office to set up a payment plan before they take it.

Except OP is enlisted and they would just make the correction on his next paycheck.

Omg, that had me rolling

The actual creator's site is a gold mine. Link to story on David Thorne's website

There needs to be a sub Reddit for things like this

27b/6... Nice. Haven't been to his site in years lol

What the fuck this is great

Thank you for this

!RedditSilver

David Thorne

Ooh this gonna be good.

I was stuck reading more of his articles, that I forgot I was here too. Damn you.

Fucking gold

I am in honest tears. Never read something so funny

My god haha that was hilarious

and will be returning last week

My sides

I didn't even click on this. I remember it and belly-laughed.

Knew it before I clicked the link. I love David Thorne's work, my grandparents got me one of his books for my birthday a few years ago.

I almost forgot about this. 😂

I love this every time I see it :)

You just made my day. This is hilarious :)

Looool

OMG, I so needed a good laugh today. Thank you

That was really really funny.

This is some quality stuff here.

This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in months. Thank you for the chuckles, my day is complete now. :)

That punchline tho

I read this in Joe Lycett's voice

This is one of the most hilarious things I have read on the internet. Thank you so much for sharing!!

Saving for later

Oh wow I completely forgot when there were multiple replies to an email chain, the ‘Re:’s would accumulate in the subject line. I don’t think I ever even noticed when that change was made.

Source.

This seems like something James Veitch would do.

Love David Thorne! I tend to read at night when everyone else is sleeping. Except for his books bc they usually have me laughing so hard I’m crying and waking everyone else up!

Thanks

Thank you for this. You made my day.

I read that in James Veitch's voice.

Re:Re:Re:Re: Who's spider is that

Had me in knots

Thank you. If I had gold, it would be yours

That's awesome.

Is this website real? Please tell me it’s non fiction.

I died. Lol

David Thorne at it again.

Honestly his rustling of Simons jimmies was my favourite.

Dear Jane

I see no reason why you could not make special provision for my boy David on the terms of that spider being one dank ass drawing. Please accept MY drawing on behalf of David which has been valued at $233.96, thank you.

Regards, Friend of David.

Jane Gilles is a saint.

You know, I’ve been laughing at this for years— but never noticed the email thread changing to “Who’s spider is that?” Goddamn.

lol. Oh god, my lungs. What a troll.

Can't believe such professionalism in the emails and they misspell "lieu" and the subject line uses "who's" instead of the the correct "whose".

Or am I wrong here?

I definitely left this picture of a spider in lieu of payment for several beers once. It wasn't much since it was hand drawn, but adequate paymemt for an hour and a half waiting for our check after four waiter requests and a visit to the bar.

That site stole the content from http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

Save

I could totally be wrong, but I feel like context is missing in this post. Maybe I'm just overanalysing, but I got the feeling that the final "It was silly of me to assume I could provide you with something of completely no value whatsoever, waste your time and then attach such a large amount to it." seemed intentionally worded to make a point and suggest that whatever Jane was charging $233 for was some over-inflated price for something of completely no value, and that the whole thing was deliberately crafted to culminate in making that point.

Ah bash. Reading these endlessly in the computer lab in 9th grade.. What a rush!

Disregard that. I suck cocks.

A blast from the past - thank you!

This is hilarious, I don't know how I've never read this.

This is so brilliant

Na. OPs post was maliciously compliant. Doing what this commenter said would probably be more /r/pettyrevenge although I do like the idea either way

Mattis is actually ordering an audit now. Rumsfeld did too, but the day after he announced it a plane hit the Pentagon.

When I was in they'd just deduct it from your next check after emailing you the details.

Funny thing is we don't audit the DoD and have billions of unaccounted funds…

$21 trillion from 1998-2015, according to MSU economist Mark Skidmore.

Yes! Just when I thought the two letters thing couldn't be topped.

I'm in Canada and we don't have pennies. Can I bet a nickel? (I'm good for it)

2meirl 'Wells Fargo Alert: As of 05/15/2018 03:39 pm Central Time your available balance for account ending XXXXXXXXX is $0.04. Reply TRA to transfer funds.'

Fatcat has enough moolah to own paper. I use scraps of McDonald’s wrappings from the dumpsters to pay for my food.

r/frugaljerk

Former Marine captain, I would have found this hilarious and probably not made him scrub floors (unless it had to get done anyways)

That being said, LOTS of officers don’t share that sense of humor. There’s a reason I got out when I did.

https://i.redd.it/fkwhhx9v4ay01.jpg

Good bot

Yep, after I came off active duty and went into the reserves DFAS did not pay me for my first three drill weekends. Then DFAS sent me a letter saying I'd been overpaid by, you guessed it, an amount equivalent to three drill weekends. I appealed this and asked for an audit, they complied. While the appeal was on-going they transferred the debt to another department and stopped the audit. When the time was up for the audit I called, found out the audit had stopped, and once again requested an audit as part of my appeal. While the second audit was on-going the "debt" was transferred to the Treasury Department's collection team who added a $200 fee for their services, so now my "debt" is well over $800 and is accruing interest. I continued to fight it but started making payments because I didn't want to accrue any more interest. My appeal was denied because I paid off the debt before it could finish. Fuck DFAS.

The weirdest part about all of this is every other time I've had an over payment I found out when the debt showed up on my LES and DFAS just started taking money from my pay, this was the only time they didn't just take it from me without asking.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for my first three months of drill pay, but it's been eight years now so I don't think they are going to pay me.

The house always wins! Same deal with the state too, in my experience.

And my experience with banks, insurance, health care providers. Anyone with more money than me.

I was the lucky fella who was owed 50k in severance and the guy responsible for sending up my dd214 and my paperwork to get signed off apparently transferred the same day. Needless to say it was found several months later in his desk drawer and processed in 24 hours after a nasty call from my congressmen.

If you think about, it kinda makes sense. Imagine if they make 1000 mistakes like these. Instead of fixing 1000 mistakes, that could be work for a week, they put those on people and each people only have 1 problem.

Just kidding, their mistake, their problem. (should be at least)

That's how all branches of government operate.

And banks.

How I’ve always heard it is “my bad, your fault”

Reddit keeps on telling me exactly why I shouldn't enlist.

I think that's the experience with any American company.

That's because the vast majority of the government is just incompetent people leading incompetent people.

Yknow when you're a kid in school and you didn't get counted at attendance? Suddenly you're in the office for skipping but you were there the whole time.

Seems like the US government got you with the adult version. At least they didn't try to court martial you lol

That would be a nice TDY haha.

This was a few years ago... I think it was around 2 months or so.

Air Force here, but I imagine it's similar across the military. Errors are surprisingly frequent. As a very uninformed guess, I wouldn't be surprised if close to a third of all members have a pay issue at some point, although most of them would be relatively minor.

As far as why? Three reasons I can think of.

First is that our computer systems are probably survivors from the 90's, and weren't really good in their prime anyway

Second is a bad mix of physical and electronic records and systems.

Third, very few people join the military actually wanting to work in finance. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone there, but in jobs like this that aren't really sought after, you get demoralized people who wanted to do more in the military and people who always intended to do the minimum to stay in and get their benefits.

Probably no way to round down in the system so the interest charge was likely .0001 or something like that but rounds up automatically.

The ole interest ceiling. .02X -> .03 that's how they get you fishing in your piggy bank.

Normaly telephone companies, water, energy, etc had a rule about what you pay where if they had to charge you with a quantity below a cent they charge you a cent because 1 cent is the smallest quantity you can pay.

Probably the interests were like .01 cent or so, but they charge the entire cent for that.

They kept sending me physical letters so more like 2€ each.

OP said online banking which is ACH. ACH os incredibly cheap for business and most times free for the consumer.

Any percentage of a cent normally rounds up

Yes the color reflected him being decently hydrated.

100 bottles of pee on the wall, 100 bottles of pee. You take an empty, full it with piss. 101 bottles of pee on the wall

Sniper IRL

How else can your tell if your precious bodily fluids are clean and pure? Plus emergency rehydration!

Way of the road, Bubs.

Make a big deal about it during the morning formation. Call him out like he's receiving a commendation and then hand him his change.

Current Captain, this shit is funny as hell. He’s definitely getting something to remember it by. So what if he wasted his own money nothing illegal and all he did was waste his own money for a joke. His Capt blows

I understand the argument for being a constant professional and ALL your actions are a reflection of the uniform but at the same time, 2 pennies? It was obviously a joke and not malicious.

Pee bottle Andy, lmao

This is completely ok in my eyes. Just acknowledge, albeit under the table, that 2 pennies is shit and no one got hurt by my extra postage.

Learned that adding ‘with all due respect’ is basically the equivalent of saying ‘fuck you’

Just because you say “ With all due respect” doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want.

Also didn't fellate him and/or gargle his balls.

You'd still be cleaning the floors: You forgot to address the Captain with all due respect.

Modern slavery 101.

You forgot to address the Captain with all due respect.

Nope. He covered it.

My husband is military and the fact that he signs his work emails “v/r” really makes me laugh. What could be more “very respectful” than not bothering to type out the sentiment, even just ONE TIME to add it to your email signature??

Captains are man children masquerading as older man children.

Two ways you can get on my bad side is to call me "sir" after I told you not to, or use the phrase "with all due respect."

Do it, send them a letter of overpayment.

Petitioning the government for my penny back.

"next week in TIFU"

Happy cake day!

fuckfuck game

this guy militarys

In my experience, uniform.

Well are you his CO? Lol

Even over two cents Just my two cents.

ftfy

You work for the government, so doesn't that make you a fed too?

actual moral of the story: don't work for the feds, and fuck with them as much as possible.

Fuck them man.

That’s not discipline, that’s some retarded bullying.

Look for an exit dude. Not kidding. Get to a better place.

Don't fuck with your employers in a job you can't quit, more like.

Catch .02 dollars or Catch .02 cents?

Do the wrong thing: get in trouble.

Do the right thing: get in trouble.

Eventually you learn how to skirt by by doing exactly what is required and nothing more.

Being a patriot

on reddit

https://i.imgur.com/WwPCYDt.gif

Military pay issues date back to the Revolution and Shay's rebellion

Sure why not

Bruh, a Doc buddy I have just reupped into the weekend warriors. He’s obviously an idiot.

I'm still scrolling for the part where he thinks the cost of sending a letter is $5.

USPS is pretty decent at what it does.

just buy some satoshi and email it to us

Inspired by that, yes. The original quote is, 'We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of.'

It probably wasn't even discipline. They needed the floors cleaned and OP was the first person to be noticed by an officer

I would say it's likely the note that pushed it over the edge.

The waste of stamps is the guy's problem. The penny is an annoyance, since now he's overpaid and you have to follow up. The accompanying poorly written letter was unnecessary.

The badly written post-it note in a stamp covered envelope was pretty passive aggressive...

I would guess it is more about attitude than action. Half the point of things like boot camp is to break a person down so completely that the instructors can essentially rebuild aspects of their personhood from scratch. This is especially true of enlisted folks: thinking is not only not their job, it is counter-productive to the military's goals. When you are instructed by an authority to do something, you do it, even if it seems ridiculous.

One exercise that routinely happens at boot camp begins with a pair of instructors yelling at the same enlisted man at the same time with contradicting orders. When he tries to obey one, the other chews him out for not obeying his order, then punishes him with some form of exercise (like pushups). Repeat until the man starts sobbing, pukes, or collapses, then still keep repeating it until he pushes through or just completely loses the capacity to respond.

The point is obviously not physical fitness. The point is to completely destroy the natural human response of asking "Why?". Why doesn't matter. Mop the beach? Yes sir. I'm a pretty princess? Yes sir. Shoot that guy? Yes sir. Authority is the only thing that matters. Incidentally, I assume this is a large part of why soldiers experience such high rates of untreated mental illness. Seeking help for mental illness requires introspection and voluntary emotional vulnerability, but the military life actively destroys many people's capacity for either.

In practice, this kind of treatment doesn't often happen after the break-in period in training, but sometimes officers will bring down the hammer simply because they can.

Probably should have done what he was told and kept that damn penny

he gave them attitude. if this is how he react to something minor how will he react when he is ordered to fight to his death? ultimately soldiers are just pawns and must do what they are told or the whole system falls apart.

He got disciplined for attitude. Army don't stand for that shit.

something passive aggressive.

What OP did was absolutely passive aggressive. Dude isn't in trouble for sending back 3 pennies, dude is in trouble for being an idiot dick about it.

Even if it was automated, someone made the decision that ALL amounts outstanding would get a letter, rather than withholding the difference or just letting it slide. Automation just means that a single decision was made, further away from the coal face.

Captain is likely just having a good laugh, and teaching his soldier the importance of being precise.

Actually captains having a great laugh at the stupidity of it and had someone in front of him to volunteer for shit duty so he doesn't have to deal with finding one later.

If it's automated, they shouldn't be sending out those letters in the first place, it should just be automatically taking it out of your next check instead. Either way, that situation shouldn't ever happen. It's 2018, not 1918.

No one has mentioned the letter OP wrote with the 3 pennies, which is the whole r ason the captain got a pissed off phone call and decided to fuck with OP.

Next up on r/pettyrevenge

I'm a dfas worker who got a snarky reply from a guy who got an automated overpayment letter. I sent the letter to his command. As I have military family I know they'll give him a shit job for being a sarcastic moron.

The joke was rated as appropriately as our 100 million dollar joke study saw fit.

-The Government

I was the first to point it out sooooooooo...

No one gets it.

Do I really have to answer that? Let your imagination flow...

Probably tastes like the spunk you got from your dad as a kid

[deleted]

Hey, you should consider doing physics https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-severe-disorder

Man i hated garrison so much. And cav always gets fucked with stupid post details and shit. Yeah he was prolly bored as fuck.

Mine would have loved, typical officer response though.

45/50 million... It works, because not a "single" entity pays the difference.

From 12.01 it's 13. However no one would normally receive a payment of 12/13 . Salaries are monthly or bi- weekly at most.
You wouldn't steal cents from your employee because it's stupid. Even with 2000 employees you would make at most 1999 in earnings... Which is stupid...