A paycheck mix-up has led to an unintended bump in the paychecks of several hundred Hennepin County employees — and now the county wants the overpayment back.

About 216 government employees will have their upcoming paychecks adjusted after they were accidentally overpaid, Chief Financial Officer David Lawless said during an interview Tuesday.

While the employees averaged an overpayment of $221, there was at least one person who was overpaid by $1,800.

"It's unfortunate that it does get into the holidays here," Lawless said.

The overpayment occurred because of complications with recalculating some employees' pay due to overtime as well as retroactive pay associated with midyear labor contract settlements.

Most of the amounts will be taken out of the next paycheck this Friday, less than a week before Christmas.

However, for people that have larger amounts to give back, administrators have given employees the option of taking the overpayment out of several pay periods.

Administrators were alerted about the mistake when an employee noticed being substantially overpaid.

Most of the employees were notified at the beginning of last week about the overpayment.

The mistake affected members of five different unions. About 350 other employees were also affected but didn't require an adjustment because the overpayment amount was negligible or nonexistent.

NICOLE NORFLEET