Two bitter, funny stories. One from this week and one from just now. Both are fun demonstrations of the unbelieveable things that people in this company will say with a straight face.
Last week, I asked for a fan, since the box they moved me to has zero ventilation. It is a completely enclosed space. So anyway, our Comptroller pointed out that I would need to get my department's permission, since the cost would be billed to them. Fair enough.
Now, I figured my manager would probably okay it, or at worst just say no. But her response was hilarious: I'm not in her budget since I'm in Canada. Instead claiming that my budget comes out of the Canadian
Sales budget (which sure was news to Sales!), so, uh, hey
you guys pay for that. The National Sales Manager and I had a pretty good laugh about that one.
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So today I got a fax from a client for an account application. It was perfectly legible, though a bit small. I faxed to that to the appropriate Finance Monkey to set the account up.
So this morning, I get a "this fax was illegible" line. O-kay.
We scanned the originals here and I sent the images over to her. The scans were perfectly legible. But sure enough, I get a reply "I can't read this".
So hey, sure, I'll play ball. I mean, golly, that magnification tool in Acrobat can be a real scary complicated thing - and god knows that only a PROGRAMMING WIZIZARD can figure out 'fit to item to page' in the print settings menu. I mean, hell, what are you even DOING in the print settings menu? Normal business users are only certified to operate the one-touch print icon. Meddling with the printer settings is something only a Trained Professional should attempt. Adobe cannot be held responsible should untrained use result in an unsightly loss of limbs.
So anyway, I opened the scans, enlarged them myself, re-sent the whole damn thing.
Then I got a reply: Oh, uh, okay. I'll uh do this Wednesday when you're out of the office for Canada Day. Maybe.
And then to cap it all off, I got a call from that customer exactly five minutes later wondering why the order they wanted to place hadn't gone out yet. They hadn't called in a month.