Even competent businesses are made up of humans who make mistakes. This is a very dumb way to steal wages. Assuming this entire situation is even real, this looks like the HR person isn’t very good at math. Accounting could have catched it, but at the same time many businesses have almost no guardrails or proper procedures for this kind of stuff, especially smaller more traditional ones. Not out of malice, but because resistance to change.

I was agreeing with Plebcouncilman. They did scrutinize. They got a response, they’re idiots. I have to assume they corrected it. If not, by all means, raise hell but how exactly do wages negate Hanlon’s razor?