Karma Test

Let’s say you’ve worked for a company for eight months. You made a lot of money in that time – let’s round it to an even $75,000. But you also made a lot of mistakes. Yeah, you cost the company some money, but that’s built into your pay plan (a certain percentage off your commission, say). Finally, however, you did something so careless that it could have put the company out of business. They let you go.

But they let you go generously. That is, they pay all the money owed you, plus vacation time you accrued for the following year. Nothing is held up, nothing is nickel-and-dime’d. There’s just one problem, though. When you get your finally commission check, you see they overpaid you $1,500. It’s something they should have deducted from your commission, something that again is built into your pay plan, but for some reason they never deducted it.

Question:

What do you do?


(1) Keep the money and hope no one ever finds out about it

(2) Keep the money and hope no one at the company ever discovers their error

(3) Call them to let them know of the overpayment, and pay it all back immediately

(4) Call them to let them know of the overpayment, and arrange a schedule of smaller repayments

(5) Decide you’ll wait to find new work and then repay the overpayment in full

(6) Decide you’ll wait to find new work and then arrange a schedule of smaller repayments


What do you think this turkey I’m dealing with is going to decide to do?