Fucking Up At Work!

A funny thing happened to me this morning at work. I had a co-worker really stick his foot in his mouth and actually was left speechless. Here's what happened.

First let me set the scenario up for you. The company I work for occupies 2 different buildings that are about 5 miles apart. Previously we were just a block away from each other and before that, the people who work in the corporate headquarters (where I work) were located upstairs from the operations department. For whatever reason, there has always seemed to be a rivalry between the two. Today, I got first hand a taste of that rivalry. For the record I am a credit manager for a trucking company. The other person involved is a sales coordinator. I won't name names here because all trucking companies are essentially the same and most have the positions involved here.

The sales department often looks at the credit manager as a “sales prevention manager”. And I admit, without exception, I believe that everyone in the sales department could give a shit less if we ever get paid. Just fill them trucks up! To stimulate sales and reduce empty miles for our trucks and drivers, the sales coordinator position was created to look for loads in areas where our trucks delivered, but had little or no freight coming out of. Basically a money-losing situation. However, the sales coordinator was to get the approval of the credit manager before anything was picked up. For a long time, I ran the credit checks, told the sales coordinator if the prospect was credit worthy or not. And for a long time we had no problems. Then a week ago, I got a credit application from a deadbeat customer who had screwed us out of money a few years back. I denied credit, but mysteriously we had already picked up the freight. Not the way the system is supposed to work. I filed it away mentally. Then yesterday, another customer came up bad on their credit report. When I called the coordinator, I found out that once again, we had already picked up the freight. “It was a one time thing” I was told. Well, I already knew this was bullshit, but kept my mouth shut.

Forward to this morning. Once again I had a credit check to do. Instead of spending the $20 for a D&B report I called the coordinator to see if we already had the freight. We did! So I simply replied that he no longer needed to send me the credit applications. As per procedure, I went to the higher ups to see how they wanted to handle credit applications in the future. Basically I was told to speak to the coordinator and try to work something out. That's where the fun began!

When I called the coordinator, I said “this is Mark, how are you doing?”. I was told that the coordinator “wasn't worth a shit”; that he had “people in the ivory tower” keeping him from doing his job. That everyone in the tower was taking “2 hour lunches and playing golf”. At first I thought he was joking. Like I said, there has always been the rivalry or separation between the buildings. About that time, the coordinator realized that he thought he was speaking to another “Mark”. He stammered and after a couple of seconds hung up the phone. Needless to say, there was egg on his face.

A couple of minutes later, I got an email explaining that he was sorry and that he was too embarrassed to even call me back. I answered that it was no big deal, gave him my thoughts on how to improve the process and then took him to task about playing golf. Especially since I haven't picked up a club this year! It was all laughed off by me as a joke. Mostly because I couldn't care what some sales coordinator thinks. I'm here with one purpose-to make sure the customers pay and to weed out the ones who will not or don't.

But there is a lesson to be learned here. Technology makes it very simple for us to communicate, especially in an office setting. But be careful what you say on the phone whether you are sure of who is calling or not. And be careful sending those emails. One wrong click and the wrong person can receive a message intended for someone else. That's also happened here! Sometimes I think the people around me at work were put here for my amusement. They are pretty fucking stupid and hilarious at times!