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It’s amazing the memories you can have at a funeral or memorial service. Situations and circumstances you hadn’t thought about in a long time might suddenly come back to you.

In this story, one man was at his friend’s memorial service when he remembered a story about his friend’s last day as a Marine. It involves his final paycheck, and he believes it’s a good example of what his friend was like.

Let’s read all about it.

You owe me money? That’s fine. I’ll wait for the check.

Disclaimer- This is not my story, but a close friend that I served in the Marine Corps with.

He passed away recently and I remembered this story while at his memorial service today.

I think this story truly wraps up what he was like.

There was a big problem over $4.

As my friend was doing his final check out to get out of the Marine Corps, it came time to do his final pay audit. (This is where they figure out down to the penny what your final paycheck will be. Colossal pain in the butt, BTW.)

As the clerk was doing a double check of all the numbers, he caught that someone had miscalculated a transaction. So, he had been shorted by 4 dollars and change. (As I understand it, the pay had already been sent to disbursing and there was no fixing it.)

As I’m sure many people on here can attest to, if you owe the US government money, they will take it in a heartbeat. They don’t care one bit. I’ve seen Marines not get paychecks for several months in a row because the government needed that money all back at once.

So, as a matter of principle, my friend raised a little bit of a stink, and told the clerk he wanted every penny that was due to him.

The situation got escalated.

The clerk had never run into this before so he had to talk to his NCO (non-commissioned officer, first line supervisor) then the SNCOIC (staff non- commissioned officer in charge, senior enlisted for the pay department.)

It eventually got elevated to the officer in charge of the admin center, a grumpy old Chief Warrant Officer.

The CWO came out and told my friend, “You do realize we’ll have to request a US Treasury hard check for you, right?”

“Yes, sir. That’s fine. I’ll wait.”

It was about the principle of the thing, not the money.

The CWO even offered him 4 dollars out of his own pocket to get him on his way.

My friend refused just on principle. “I don’t want YOUR money, sir. I want the government’s money.”

So, my friend waited around in their office for about 6 hours for them to cut him a hard check from the US Treasury for around 4 dollars.

He never even cashed it. Again, it was the principle of the thing.

I’m not sure it was worth a 6-hour wait, but if it made him feel better, then I guess it was. Since he didn’t cash it, I hope he framed it.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

One person shares a story about their boss.

Another person likes OP’s friend.

This person shares the types of stories they love.

I completely agree with this comment!

I hope he shared that story at the memorial service or at least with some of his friends. I also hope the check still exists somewhere. It really needs to be framed and kept as a memento.