<prompt> Human: Ok guys, Ive -never- posted anything on Reddit before so if Im doing it wrong please forgive me. A little background on my question: I worked for a security company in CA a few years ago, that would send out paper checks bi-weekly for payroll. We would get these checks on Wednesday, even though payday wasnt technically untill Thursday. At one point, I cashed my check on my way to work, at about 10 AM Thursday morning. No problems, and the money was in my acct right after I cashed it, and since this is the era of electronic checks, I assumed there was no issue; Thursday -was- payday after all. A few days later, I got a letter of reprimand in the mail, stating I wasnt allowed to cash my paychecks until after 430 PM, and if I ever cashed my check early again, I wouldnt be allowed to have my check mailed to me, and would have to go to the office a good 50 miles away to pick up my checks on -Friday- instead.I was reading another post here in rpersonalfinace that talked about the posting times for checks instant payment deductions vs. week long waits for refunds and it got me thinking about this incident. I always just assumed that the company was barely floating and that I may have almost? made them bounce a check, but now I wonder if its for some other reason, given how long it takes for the money to actually show up in an account. Have any of you experienced something like this, and do you have any insight as to why the policy may have been this way? I thought it was really weird that the check would be dated for the Thursday, and then a time constraint would be put on it like that, particularly after what I read in the other topic about dates on checks being for record keeping only, and the bank not paying attenttion to the dates anyway. Does the time the check is cashed really matter?  <response>: I had a manager tell me once that money is not put into the payroll account until mid day on payday, and this was a large, successful franchise with seemingly no chance of going under. So it couldve been a case of checks bouncing at that time, but I dont see why they wouldnt just give you your paycheck later then. 