Oops, a mistake!

If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny. Microsoft paid laid-off staff too much severance money— and then tried to get it back. Was it a technical glitch that caused the computer company to pay the staff too much? No — maybe the personnel department just forgot to download the latest security patches for Vista.

You can see the letter Microsoft sent out over at TechCrunch . In the letter, Microsoft vaguely explains what went wrong. The company uses a typical business expression that blames nobody:

“an inadvertent administrative error occurred”. 

The admission starts with “an”. This lets us know that only one thing happened. What follows “an” is important. It’s the adjective “inadvertent”. Microsoft lets us know from the beginning that whatever happened, it wasn’t planned. It wasn't a deliberate mistake.

Then, we have “administrative”. This shows that it had something to do with organization. It’s not clear what exactly went wrong — but that’s not important. Now, let’s look at “error”. This means the same as mistake, but somehow doesn’t sound as serious. It was a careless mistake.

Finally, Microsoft chooses the verb here very carefully. The verb used is “occur”, which simply means “happen”. By using “occurred”, the company is trying to emphasize that nobody planned the overpayment. It just happened. It was a simple mistake.

It’s nicely worded — but it still sends out the wrong message: (i.e. big corporation has no heart).

There’s a happy ending to the sad tale, however.