pink-slipsI would think this is the least they could do for the 1400 employees who recently received pink slips. Microsoft realized that an administrative glitch caused it to pay more severance than intended to some laid-off employees. The company’s response: It asked the ex-workers for the money back.

But when one of Microsoft’s letters seeking repayment surfaced on the Web on Saturday, the situation turned embarrassing. On Monday, the company reversed course and said the laid-off workers could keep the extra payouts.

Lisa Brummel, Microsoft’s senior vice president for human resources, said the letters were mailed to 25 of the 1,400 people let go in January. Most of the checks were off by about $4,000 to $5,000, she said.

Brummel said she learned of the letters over the weekend after one appeared on the technology blog TechCrunch.

The executive called most of the 25 laid-off employees Monday to personally tell them Microsoft would not seek repayment after all.

Brummel called the glitch a clerical error, and said that at some point in the process of calculating severance packages, communicating with employees and cutting checks, “we had payments misaligned with people’s names.” (Brummel said she didn’t know whether an Excel spreadsheet was at the root of the problem.)