A Work Rant

I do realize need to update this thing more often but this week has been insanely busy and I am booked solid this weekend. So more updates will have to wait a little longer.

Having just said that, I need to rant. It is never fun to leave the office on Friday with a bad taste in your mouth. Our accounting department and GM have put off on payment of a big invoice for 2-3 weeks. They were overdue back then but we were waiting for the exchange rate to come down. Each time our agent would contact me or the company would send me a letter I would talk to the company accountants.

With second to last letter they sent I spoke with the accountants and they told me to tell the GM--who was busy at the time. Since one of the accountants was going in to talk to the GM anyway she told me she would talk to him. The answer was the same--wait for the exchange rate.

So today I get a final letter saying pay up today or we stop doing business with you. Well I take this directly to the GM. Apparently, the urgency of the situation was not adequately conveyed to him by accounting. When I sat down with him and conveyed that urgency the funds were transferred within an hour.

Of course, the accountants blamed me. After all, they said, I should have told the GM each time letters came or I got emails in addition to telling accounting. To be fair, there is without a doubt some truth to that and in the future I need to communicate that better to the GM since he gives approvals to pay invoices like this.

But let's get serious accounting department. Do you really mean to tell me that if I communicate this kind of thing to you (my job is to communicate with foreign companies) that you cannot handle the internal communication and I cannot trust you to convey this kind of thing to the GM? Part of my job is to act as the "bouncer" and to sort out what the GM and president need to know and what can be better dealt with at lower levels. If I clearly tell you this needs to be paid and go through and explain the letters to you then you still cannot communicate that? Could I have talked with the GM after each contact? Absolutely, but if I talked to him about each email or letter I get then it's a waste of his and my time. Accounting is responsible for paying invoices. I guess I was wrong to think that communicating with them about an urgent matter is enough to make them take the initiative to handle this sort of thing.

What pisses me off the most about this episode is that they are trying to pass this and future responsibility to me. They essentially said to me--well you have to tell the GM too since we cant always tell him. The unstated assumption on their part is since GM likes me and I am not scared of him (like they are) I should have this reponsibility. That's a load, if you can't tell him why do I bother talking to you at all? In my opinion, this part of my job should be to communicate information from foreign business/contacts to the people who need to know so that they can handle the given matter internally. At that point I believe I should hand off responsibility to them. It is a waste of my time if I have to chase every little invoice or problem down--but that is what accounting thinks I should do.

But the weekend is going to be awesome.