A former Pfizer employee, dubbed "Viagra gal" by the New York Post, hit the layoff lottery when she found the company had accidentally inflated her severance payment by half a million. But now the company is intent on taking back their unintentional largesse.It's not clear whether former sales VP Janet Rodriguez was ever involved with the Viagra account before the pharma giant let her go in 2009, but she did work for the company for 16 years. Her severance for those years of service was supposed to be a little over $100,000.
Instead, Pfizer sent her a check for $517,140.24 - about $410,000 more than she was supposed to receive. (Maybe she got one of the CEO's bonuses by accident?) She kept it (wouldn't you?), but months later Pfizer came calling to recoup the excess cash, sending letters and finally a collections agency after Rodriguez. She ignored them.
She's sticking to her guns: "By virtue of the fact that they bring this claim so late in the game, so long after their alleged mistake, (it) is just a cheap bullying tactic that we expect the court to see right through," said her lawyer. But we expect Pfizer to stick to theirs, and keep pursuing the matter.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. In the meantime, you can check out the original lawsuit, which is entertaining for its use of the term "enhanced lump sum" and the creepy corporate-speak euphemism "Adapting to Scale" (to describe Pfizer's layoffs).
