Perhaps I’m misreading here, but am I to understand that many employers in the US pay their employees with actual cheques, as opposed to direct credit into their bank accounts?
The word “quaint” springs readily to mind, along with “inefficient”…
Is it possible to get paid in Doubloons as well? 
Yes, exactly.
Most employees LOVE direct deposit – the cash is already in my account even before I get out of bed. But it’s not so great for the employer. Not only does he have to have the money a few days sooner than he could get away with otherwise, but there are also various fees and such (which might or might not be offset by not having to write and distribute the physical checks).
PS to my above comment:
The question of actual checks vs direct deposit is really irrelevant to the main points raised in this thread. When people have posted comments about their “paycheck”, they might actually be referring to the stub of information which explains how the employer arrived at the dollar figure that got deposited into his account.
Depends where you fall on the social scale. There are still a lot of people in the USA that don’t have bank accounts, and so there’s no place to direct deposit into. They can cash their checks at the issuing bank or go to a check cashing place that will happily charge some percentage of the check for the favor. Grocers used to (maybe still do) cash payroll checks as well, and sometimes this is/was a free service or they’d credit the charge toward your checkout total.
My employer requires salaried people to have direct deposit, at least superficially. I don’t know how they handle people that don’t have bank accounts; probably just issue checks as an exception to policy. New hires, of course, receive checks until the direct deposit takes affect. We also no longer receive pay stubs; those are available on the intranet. Hourly folks, though, still receive printed pay stubs, and you’d be surprised by how many of them prefer the check to direct deposit – and these aren’t low wages we’re talking about, either.
Heck, as far back as 1990 the US Army required us to have direct deposit. All the rage then was for the local banks to make your money available to you a day early if you set up direct deposit with them (never mind the fact that it will still the same number of days between paydays!).
If you’re earning under the table you’re probably not going to want direct deposit. Or if you’re day labor. Or if you cash out in cash (waitstaff?). I wonder if fast food offers direct deposit these days. There was always a lot of employee churn, but there were still significant numbers of long-timers, too. Back in those days I’d take advantage of the aforementioned grocer check-cashing (well, a big megastore).
Oh, one more. Hourly and salaried people in our Mexican facilities are required to have direct deposit, too, even though they may make a pittance compared to our US counterparts. You know when it’s pay day because the in-house ATMs have a huge queue formed in front of them.
I’m American, and I’ve had direct deposit at all jobs I’ve held since the mid 1980s. Otherwise, I agree with everything Balthisar just said.
Ed
As the OP notes, if these were large companies then it is unlikely that the final paycheck calculations were screwed up.
One possibility not yet discussed is that the final paycheck might have been reduced by vacation taken but not yet accrued. Every job I’ve worked has allowed me to take vacation in advance of actually earning it. But if I would quit before the end of the year and I had used up all my vacation days, I’d owe the company money and they’d take it out of my final paycheck.
Just another possibility to consider.