Oh, Army, you are so funny...

As some of you may or may not be aware, when the Army overpays you in some fashion, once they figure out what they've done, they get hella cranky. Suddenly, their mistake is your fault.

This could be understandable if, perhaps, they just randomly throw on four hundred bucks to your normal every single two weeks pay and when you get the LES you are all "WTF? Extra four hundred bucks?! Hells yes, I'm throwing a cheese and Dr. Pepper Party!"

I once spent an hour and a half on the phone with various other Army Spouses, trying to figure out why Captain's monthly pay was over by fifty-six cents. No one knows, still.

However, what usually happens is that you're in the middle of a strange transition where your paychecks are fluctuating anyway, because you're pay rate is going up (or down) and you're getting your clothing allowance or your anniversary bonus or your spouse is just coming home from or has been on deployment for over a month so your special pay rates have just kicked in and you have no idea what all those little initials on the pay stub mean, so you sit there and compare them with other pay stubs you've seen in the past and then you call your husband over and say "Do you know what this is? Why are we getting this paid still, you're home?" and your husband says "I think it's because I didn't get home until the month started?" and you hem and haw, but then you shrug and say "It's not like the Army hasn't been paying soldiers for about a bajillion years, I guess they know what they're doing."

They don't, actually.

So, what usually happens is the Army suddenly goes "Holy fuck! We gave Private Joe Schmoo too much money! Fuck that shit, dock his paycheck for ALL OF IT, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!" and then poor Joe, if he's lucky, gets less pay that pay period. If he's unlucky, he gets no pay. Because the Army does not give a fuck if a guy can't feed his family, it's his fault for not noticing he got over-paid at some point before, amIright?

Even, as I have actually seen, if they are simultaneously over-paying you one amount for an item and under-paying you another. If that happens and you bring it to their attention, they will not split the difference with you and either ask for what is left that you owe or pay you back what they owe. What they will do, instead, is immediately dock your check for the total amount they've been over-paying and then ask you to begin a two to even longer month paperwork process to possibly begin receiving the back-pay they owed you from the start.

I bring this up because I usually inspect our pay stubs with a magnifying glass because I do not want a no-paycheck half-a-month. However, last pay period was, in fact, Captain's anniversary, his first pay with his promotion, and a clothing allowance, plus there was still his combat/deployment stuff. Did I mention that the first half of the month you don't even get a broken down list of how they come to the amount they pay you, it's just a small stublette that says "You get this much monies this week, yay!" so you can't even figure out what the hell you're being paid for until the end of the month. So, back to that specific pay stub, it still had deployment stuff. I ask the husband if that's correct because it seems fishy, BUT I know for a fact there are certain deployment benefits that are paid for a full month even if you only spend one single day overseas (Tax Exempt, I'm looking at you).

Captain thinks for a minute, reminds me he didn't come home until the second of June and was technically overseas when the month started, so he thinks it's right.

Then, today... I get woken up early by a phone call from Captain (Again, that makes him 5/5 this week, which makes me annoyed like hell). The Army has overpaid us by "like" four hundred dollars for family seperation and they want their money back, do we want to write them a check or have them pull it from the end of the month pay or they even offered to take it out of the next twelve months? Ohhhh, options!

I tell him to confirm the pay that's depositing into our account today is actually correct, and I will write them a check. He'll have to come home to get it or they'll have to wait until Monday because I'm the one in control of the household paper monies, mwhahahaha. "Okies! I'll go see if I can confirm our pay!"

"Fabulous," I grunt and decide to go ahead and get out of bed since my sleepy times are ruined anyway.

Then, being the super genius that I am, I pull up last months detailed pay stub. Umm... no, they did not over pay us "like" four hundred for family separation. They didn't even pay us four hundred for family sep. in the first place. There it was, the standard $250. Which, I am totally willing to pay back if they say so because what the hell do I know about how the Army figures out pay? So I call back the Captain and point this out. I tell him that I'm not paying a cent of this "like" four hundred, until they tell me what it's actually for, because none of the various things we got paid for on the last pay stub are four hundred bucks. I could add a few random ones up to get four hundredish pretty easy, so if that's where the amount is coming from, I can see that. Again, do not understand Army pay allowances (seriously, some start the day you leave, some start after you've been gone thirty days, some stay the rest of the month after you return, etc).

However, I'm not paying that much money for just a generic "Oops, we over paid you for, umm... family sep. sounds good. Yes, that's what we over paid for. Give us monies."

My husband, of course, did not answer his phone when I called because there are certain buildings that you can not carry a phone in for... reasons. >_>

So, moral of this story for anyone who is thinking about joining the US Armed Forces - watch your LES like a HAWK.

ETA: We now have an itemized list of what we were over-paid. Turns out, none of those numbers are the same as what is on the pay stub because we were supposed to get partial payments, not full payments, for two things. *Headdesk* Still have not been able to confirm the current pay is correct though. Captain will be going to finance this afternoon to check that, also, while I would like to give the Army a check, they didn't actually tell us who to write it out to or where to take it. Because that would be too helpful, yes?

ETA AGAIN: So I wrote out a check for them, because I'm a good girl. But then! Captain calls me back and says it actually needs to be two checks, that are totally going to the same place with the same PAY TO. Hate. Them.

Oh, Army, you are so funny...

As some of you may or may not be aware, when the Army overpays you in some fashion, once they figure out what they've done, they get hella cranky. Suddenly, their mistake is your fault.

This could be understandable if, perhaps, they just randomly throw on four hundred bucks to your normal every single two weeks pay and when you get the LES you are all "WTF? Extra four hundred bucks?! Hells yes, I'm throwing a cheese and Dr. Pepper Party!"

I once spent an hour and a half on the phone with various other Army Spouses, trying to figure out why Captain's monthly pay was over by fifty-six cents. No one knows, still.

However, what usually happens is that you're in the middle of a strange transition where your paychecks are fluctuating anyway, because you're pay rate is going up (or down) and you're getting your clothing allowance or your anniversary bonus or your spouse is just coming home from or has been on deployment for over a month so your special pay rates have just kicked in and you have no idea what all those little initials on the pay stub mean, so you sit there and compare them with other pay stubs you've seen in the past and then you call your husband over and say "Do you know what this is? Why are we getting this paid still, you're home?" and your husband says "I think it's because I didn't get home until the month started?" and you hem and haw, but then you shrug and say "It's not like the Army hasn't been paying soldiers for about a bajillion years, I guess they know what they're doing."

They don't, actually.

So, what usually happens is the Army suddenly goes "Holy fuck! We gave Private Joe Schmoo too much money! Fuck that shit, dock his paycheck for ALL OF IT, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!" and then poor Joe, if he's lucky, gets less pay that pay period. If he's unlucky, he gets no pay. Because the Army does not give a fuck if a guy can't feed his family, it's his fault for not noticing he got over-paid at some point before, amIright?

Even, as I have actually seen, if they are simultaneously over-paying you one amount for an item and under-paying you another. If that happens and you bring it to their attention, they will not split the difference with you and either ask for what is left that you owe or pay you back what they owe. What they will do, instead, is immediately dock your check for the total amount they've been over-paying and then ask you to begin a two to even longer month paperwork process to possibly begin receiving the back-pay they owed you from the start.

I bring this up because I usually inspect our pay stubs with a magnifying glass because I do not want a no-paycheck half-a-month. However, last pay period was, in fact, Captain's anniversary, his first pay with his promotion, and a clothing allowance, plus there was still his combat/deployment stuff. Did I mention that the first half of the month you don't even get a broken down list of how they come to the amount they pay you, it's just a small stublette that says "You get this much monies this week, yay!" so you can't even figure out what the hell you're being paid for until the end of the month. So, back to that specific pay stub, it still had deployment stuff. I ask the husband if that's correct because it seems fishy, BUT I know for a fact there are certain deployment benefits that are paid for a full month even if you only spend one single day overseas (Tax Exempt, I'm looking at you).

Captain thinks for a minute, reminds me he didn't come home until the second of June and was technically overseas when the month started, so he thinks it's right.

Then, today... I get woken up early by a phone call from Captain (Again, that makes him 5/5 this week, which makes me annoyed like hell). The Army has overpaid us by "like" four hundred dollars for family seperation and they want their money back, do we want to write them a check or have them pull it from the end of the month pay or they even offered to take it out of the next twelve months? Ohhhh, options!

I tell him to confirm the pay that's depositing into our account today is actually correct, and I will write them a check. He'll have to come home to get it or they'll have to wait until Monday because I'm the one in control of the household paper monies, mwhahahaha. "Okies! I'll go see if I can confirm our pay!"

"Fabulous," I grunt and decide to go ahead and get out of bed since my sleepy times are ruined anyway.

Then, being the super genius that I am, I pull up last months detailed pay stub. Umm... no, they did not over pay us "like" four hundred for family separation. They didn't even pay us four hundred for family sep. in the first place. There it was, the standard $250. Which, I am totally willing to pay back if they say so because what the hell do I know about how the Army figures out pay? So I call back the Captain and point this out. I tell him that I'm not paying a cent of this "like" four hundred, until they tell me what it's actually for, because none of the various things we got paid for on the last pay stub are four hundred bucks. I could add a few random ones up to get four hundredish pretty easy, so if that's where the amount is coming from, I can see that. Again, do not understand Army pay allowances (seriously, some start the day you leave, some start after you've been gone thirty days, some stay the rest of the month after you return, etc).

However, I'm not paying that much money for just a generic "Oops, we over paid you for, umm... family sep. sounds good. Yes, that's what we over paid for. Give us monies."

My husband, of course, did not answer his phone when I called because there are certain buildings that you can not carry a phone in for... reasons. >_>

So, moral of this story for anyone who is thinking about joining the US Armed Forces - watch your LES like a HAWK.

ETA: We now have an itemized list of what we were over-paid. Turns out, none of those numbers are the same as what is on the pay stub because we were supposed to get partial payments, not full payments, for two things. *Headdesk* Still have not been able to confirm the current pay is correct though. Captain will be going to finance this afternoon to check that, also, while I would like to give the Army a check, they didn't actually tell us who to write it out to or where to take it. Because that would be too helpful, yes?

ETA AGAIN: So I wrote out a check for them, because I'm a good girl. But then! Captain calls me back and says it actually needs to be two checks, that are totally going to the same place with the same PAY TO. Hate. Them.