…because they paid double!***
Mike’s employer, that is. As you know, he’s been on short term disability from work, due to all of the hospital/health issues. The way it’s set up is that he gets 100% of his regular salary, minus all the usual deductions for taxes, insurance, etc., direct-deposited just as if he were actually working. This has definitely saved our asses during what’s been a difficult enough time as it was.
Anyway, there was a slight hiccup, because the benefits manager at Mike’s work needed another piece of paper from the hospital saying that he’d been admitted again, or else she’d have to stop the disability payments. Lahey took their time getting that to us, for some reason, they didn’t have it ready when Mike was discharged a little over two weeks ago. They said they’d be mailing it, and they did. It just took several days. I faxed it to the benefits manager the day it arrived, and we hoped that it wasn’t too late to reinstate the disability money.
Still, the fact that this is our biggest gripe about this hospital is good. There was a lot worse to complain about over The Hospital From Hell, as you well know. Now Mike just needs to get the doc to sign off on the back-to-work paper, as the insurance says that he can’t return to work without it. And he feels ready to go back any time now. Hopefully, we can get that taken care of this week, and he can return to work next week.
So I checked our bank account online on Thursday, which was the appointed payday. When I saw the blanace in our checking account, I was all HOLY SHIT! How did we get that much money? It turned out that the amount of the direct deposit from Mike’s employer was DOUBLE the usual amount.
There was an incident a few years ago where there was an error, and most of the company got paid double. What they did was do a direct withdrawal, took all of the money back, and then re-deposited the correct amounts.
But now it’s Monday evening, and that money is still sitting there. Makes me wonder if the only one this happened to was Mike, perhaps due to an error in processing the disability insurance payment. If it happened to half the company, they would have noticed and the error would have been immediately reversed.
So Mike needs to call them tomorrow and tell them about this, so they can adjust it correctly. We can’t spend any of the money, even the amount that Mike was supposed to have been paid, because they’ll likely take the whole thing back and re-deposit the correct amount, as I said. Luckily we have enough of a cushion there at the moment to pay bills and live on for now. All of our June bills have been paid, and there’s still enough cash to buy food, put gas in the car, and go to ball games and stuff.
As long as they fix this before the rent comes due, we’re good.
***The title of this post comes from a sign behind the bar at the Wild Rover Pub in Manchester, NH. It says WILD ROVER PUB – YANKEE FANS PAY DOUBLE. It cracks me up every time I see it, and I saw it again last night…we went there for dinner after the Fisher Cats game.
They have all sorts of Y***** hating signs and stuff displayed. There’s a fake New Hampshire license plate that says YNKEH8TR, and where it’s supposed to say “Live Free Or Die”, it says “Hate Yanks Or Die”. And, of course, the infamous Photoshopped picture of Saddam Hussein wearing a Y***** hat! They forgot the Darth Vader version, though!
I love this place! 
You are lucky that Mike’s disability has been so painless. I cannot even begin to tell you all the issues that we have had with David’s disability since his stroke last August. The first part went ok because it was basically usage of his vacation time and then 6 weeks (I think) of full salary continuation before the FMLA portion started. From the time his FMLA started, it was a mess and his company tried to screw us out of over a month’s worth of paid time. If I hadn’t kept 100% track of every minute of pay he was due, they would have gotten away with murder. His HR lady is a complete idiot. They still screwed us by having him work part time during his FMLA usage (another LONG story in itself).
Now, we are waiting for his long term disability to start and that has to come from Sun Life insurance company. You know how FUN insurance companies are to deal with! As of July 7, it will be 12 weeks that we have been waiting. Of course, David is not getting paid while we wait and we are trying to live on my meager pittance of a salary, plus borrowing MAJOR buckage from my parents to make ends meet. He’ll get back pay once Sun finally approves his claim, but DAMN, we are BROKE in the meantime.
If Mike ends up being out longer where he has to start on FMLA, make SURE you keep track of every minute he is supposed to get paid for. Don’t trust his HR person to keep accurate count. I speak from experience!
Nicole, we have been very lucky in all of this. Mike’s HR lady is actually on the ball about all of this, she even sent us papers for LTD just in case, and warned us that Liberty Mutual (who handles LTD) takes a long time to decide on these things.
Hopefully, it won’t go that far. Hopefully he will be back to work by the end of the month, and it won’t be an issue. But if necessary, at least we have the paperwork to have ready far ahead of time.
Trust me, I’ve been keeping an eye on the money! It’s all been okay so far!
I hope you and David get your money soon. That completely sucks!