I have an example of this that happened to me:

I received a referral bonus and where the company payroll made an error and accidentally gave me a higher bonus per the level of employee my referral reward was (they set it to the bonus level for a VP and she was a Sr. Director). So unbeknownst to me they gave me $5000 extra in my bonus that should have been only $3000, not $8k. Accounting figured this out next tax season, so then they informed me the would be clawing their error overpayment back had, which apparently is legal. Thus the $5k was taken out of my next paycheck. Their error was not my fault!

I was really annoyed and basically stopped going above and beyond for that company the rest of the year. :-/

It just seemed very petty and reactionary of them for something that was their error originally. This messed up my budget and suddenly having $5k less 9 months later that I hadn't anticipated was a bit of an unforeseen financial hardship. Also she had been my 5th referral to date that they'd hired!!

The whole thing was very demoralizing.

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hnaccount_rng 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I love that example. It’s a basic exercise in “for how little money can you break any amount of trust”. Not sure how they could avoid that (besides being competent in the first place..)

	▲	randycupertino an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I felt like they should have just written off the error and let me keep it, as by the time they realized it, it was almost a year later, and I was a high-performer who had gotten promoted twice. I left the following year for a better opportunity, but this was sort of one thing that turned me 180* from being an all-in, kool-aid drinking culture-carrier to feeling kind of bitter and shafted by them.