<prompt> Human: ORIGINAL POST HERE: There were a few people who had asked for an update on my original post if anyone even remembers it by now..., apologies that it took so long. I was waiting on the update post until the situation was actually resolved, and that didnt happen until today... finally.tl;dr - I got the bonus back, read on for detailsBrief recap of my situation - gave notice on 1229, got a 4k end of year bonus with my paycheck on 1231. Employer took the full amount of the deposit out of my bank account, and wrote me a check for normal salary, as their way of taking back the bonus as they learned I would be leaving the company in January.What happened since: I did decide to follow through and work out my remaining two weeks. Some people advised me not to, but at the end of the day, I didnt regret it. When I left on the last Friday, my boss gave me props for the way I handled things and promised a glowing reference if I ever need one in the future. I figure thats probably a pretty good thing to have, as that place was my first job out of college. Im sour at the company but glad I still have the important bridges intact with my bossco-workers.A big help to me was the excellent reply I got from uproselitigator on rlegaladvice, which talked about the rules for Direct Deposit transfers and in what cases they are reversible. The company had reversed the transaction as if it was an error, but the original deposit was clearly not an error based on everything they had told me.So I called around a bit, and as it turns out, one of my family members knows someone that happens to be an attorney in VA. This generous fellow offered to write a letter on my behalf to the company, protesting the removal of money from my account. That was delivered on the morning of my last day at work. So that afternoon I had a nice sitdown with my boss and the CEO, and we all discussed our feelings. I expressed my disappointment with the companys actions shoutout to ucarsgobeepbeep for this excellent summary on the OP - I used these points almost verbatim. The CEO said a lot of things about how they viewed a bonus as half-reward, half-incentive, and therefore they were willing to offer me half. I expressed that I didnt feel that them changing their minds gave them the right to take the money out of my account, but they stood pretty firm on half and said to call them when I made up my mind.For a myriad of reasons, I wasnt really inclined to take the offer of half. Mostly because the company kept dodging the matter of how and why they removed money directly from my bank account. So the past month has been a on-going exchange of emails between my lawyer and the companys on-staff counsel trying to get them to answer on that subject. Finally, they caved and sent a check for the full amount sans taxes, etc to my lawyers office. Ill be picking it up tomorrow.If anyone is curious as to what we would have done if they hadnt agreed to return the full amount: Small claims court would have been the way to go, according to the lawyer. Dont know what the chances of success would have been, glad I dont have to find out. Huge thanks to everyone that commented on the OP. A lot of people keyed into the fact that Im young and new in the workforce, and I really appreciated people taking the time to help a newbie out. Ive definitely made some naive moves so far in my career - giving notice right before the end of the year, thinking that a company cares about me, etc., but live and learn I guess.Now I guess Id better be off to the wiki for a little dose of I have X, what should I do with it? Assistant: Incentives are there to make the worker think about staying; its not pre-pay for work. Boneheads.Human: Haha, I know, right? discretionary bonuses are a forward-looking exercise at ___, not a reward for employees who have already been paid to do their job.Thats an actual quote from them.  <response>: So according to their logic if you start on dec 30th you get the full bonus? 