Is It Friday Yet?

I don't suffer fools gladly. I have no patience whatsoever with stupid people and God knows I deal with enough of them at work. As more and more companies outsource their accounting departments, I now have the pleasure of dealing with people in three countries to collect one lousy invoice.

A very small part of my job is collections. I always wait until I'm in a really bad mood before I do it as I know by the time I'm finished I'll be ready to scream anyway. While I've always hated making collection calls, I hate it even more now that I have to deal with someone who has absolutely no idea who I am, what our company does or what invoice I'm calling about. They simply sit in front of their computer and read from a scripted response. We have a number of large customers - mainly in the food and pharmaceutical industry - Kraft, Cadbury, Cargill (they supply the chicken for McDonalds) - you get the picture. I used to actually KNOW the people in their payable departments but now I get to call the person who issued the Purchase Order who then gives me a reference number to call their centralized accounting in Texas who in turn have me call an office in INDIA to find out when we're getting our cheque.

Hello???? No wonder the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Everyone I talk to agrees this 'new improved' system isn't working so why don't they revert back to the good old days where each plant looked after paying their own invoices and the person you talked to actually knew what you were talking about. I guess that would just make too much sense.

My favourite all time response came from a young lady from the deep south. When I told her the amount of the cheque wasn't the same as the invoice, she told me, and I quote "Well, I's pregnant and since I's been pregnant I don't sees so good". You learn something every day - I never knew that pregnancy could affect your eyesight!

Only two more days....