Using the Big Hammer

One of the things I like most about my job is that I am constantly learning new things. It's not overly technical but I have a LOT of people contact. I am constantly receiving information from people, synthesizing it and making decisions. One task I had to coordinate was the movement of some data and voice lines at one of my branches. It's always a mess because you have to deal with the phone company. It's not getting any better with all these damn mergers either! Anyway, I found myself involved in a process which I don't normally manage. Basically I had to track down a contract and a check. Can you believe the phone company wouldn't do any work until they had a check up front?! What kind of shit is that?? Anyway, got the contract signed and was just waiting on the check.

The person who was processing the check was NOT responding to me. I had tried for about 3 days. Left voice mail, e-mails. My manager left e-mails. Nothing. I just assumed old girl took a couple of days off and forgot to turn on her out of office notifications. That's all fine and good but I got people breathing down my neck and I need a check!! So I looked in the company directory for her boss, gave him a call and asked a simple question, "Is Sharon in the office today?" He got my information, what I needed and told me he would get back to me. Little did I know that I had just called the VP of something or other! Yikes!! I guess it goes without saying that I received a call from old girl less than five minutes later telling me she had the check and it would be FedEx'ed today. My question is why the hell didn't she just shoot me an e-mail about this two days ago? See what happens when you don't answer my e-mails and voice mails? Let this be a lesson to you!