A bank employee accidentally transferred Rs 200,000,000,00 online after falling asleep on the keyboard. What happened next?
The supervisor overseeing the clerk's work approved the erroneous transaction without catching the mistake. She was later fired by the bank for failing to verify the transaction properly, sparking a legal battle that eventually landed in the German labour court.
Labour Court Reinstates Supervisor
The court in the state of Hesse ruled that the supervisor’s dismissal was unjust. It determined that while she may have overlooked the error, her actions did not warrant termination. The judges noted that her role involved reviewing hundreds of transactions daily under significant time pressure. On the day of the incident, she had reviewed 812 documents, spending mere seconds on each one—a workload that left little room for meticulous scrutiny.
The court emphasized that there was no evidence of malicious intent or gross negligence on the supervisor’s part. Instead of termination, the judges concluded that a formal warning would have sufficed. They ordered the bank to reinstate her, arguing that the institution’s expectations were unrealistic and that its failure to implement automated error-detection systems contributed to the problem.
What netizens said
The incident highlighted broader systemic issues within the bank. Many online commentators pointed out that such errors could have been prevented with better safeguards. Automated flagging systems, for instance, could have detected a transaction of such an unusually high amount and required additional verification.
Critics also questioned the fairness of placing sole
