What's the best way to create an HR firestorm in three easy steps? If you're Microsoft, layoff 1,400 employees, give them severance on the way out, and then ask for part of it back.

Better yet, let's add a step four: Make sure you do all of this during one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. Stir.

Sounds almost too terrible to be true, and yet there's photographic evidence that exists proving Microsoft overpaid a bunch of its former employees and now wants its money back. Oh, and some employees were apparently underpaid as well. What do you think you would do in this situation? [TechCrunch]

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