Would You Hire This Man as Your Comptroller?

[Dips]

This thread reminds me of some tales of budget stupidity involving a friend...

My neighbor Lucy works for a large company. I'm not going to name it, but it has been in the news due to financial problems. Her department does tech support for international branches. The department is based in New York, but she works out of an office in her home here in northeastern Massachusetts. There is one other Massachusetts employee of that particular department.

The department has a comptroller whose job is to keep track of the department budget. The comptroller has an assistant. Lucy suspects these two are more interested in torturing their employees than in actually saving money for the company. Here is the evidence:

Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish

Lucy has to fly to New York occasionally for department meetings. She has been told that she may only use one airline because the company gets a "deal" on flights. They save a whopping $15 per flight. Sounds good, right?

However the airline only provides flights at inconvenient time which result in Lucy needing to spend a night in a New York hotel at over $200.

The airport the required airline goes to is much further from the company offices resulting in cab fare $20 higher than for the airline Lucy used previously.

Because of the inconvient times and distances involved, Lucy, who is making far more than $15/hour spends two extra hours travelling on company time, but not being productive.

Lastly, pointlessly wasting her time and effort to "save" $15, is pissing Lucy off. Whenever she's transferred off a project, they've had very little luck finding anyone to replace her. They'd be truly hosed if she got fed up with their shit and left the company.

A New Definition of Privilege

This did not involve Lucy so much as a co-worker who was accompanying her on a trip to Hong Kong. Lucy put in for a flight with an overnight connection in Tokyo. Her co-worker, Jack, put in for a flight that went directly from the states to Hong Kong.

The comptroller's assistant emailed Jack to tell him that he had to take the same flight as Lucy since it was much cheaper to connect through Tokyo, even with the overnight hotel stay, than taking the direct flight.

The co-worker pointed out that his visa (he was from South Africa) would not allow him out of the airport in Tokyo.

The comptroller's assistant told him that was too bad, he'd need to take that flight anyway.

Jack told her that he was *not* going to spend the night sleeping at an airport. He cc'd her boss and his boss.

The comptroller's assistant emailed back, "You need to understand something. Being able to travel is a *privilege.*"

Jack emailed back, again with a cc to his boss and hers, "Thank you for the clarification. Since I wish to save the company money, I have decided to decline the privilege of travelling to Hong Kong."

Needless to say, Jack's boss wasn't about to accept his noble sacrifice; he convinced the comptroller's office to pay for a reasonable flight for Jack.

Revenge is an Expensive Dish

Lucy has met both the comptroller and his assistant a few times in person. They both like to make snide remarks about the fact that she gets to sit around all day in her "lakeside home" (Lucy's house is on the shore of a large pond) instead of having to work in an office building.

They're probably jealous. Heck, *I'm* jealous. Anybody would be, right?

Most normal people would just acknowledge being a bit envious, focus on the fact that Lucy is a productive member of the team (and a nice person to boot), choose to be happy for her, then focus on persuing their own happiness.

But these two chose to imply that Lucy is lazy and that is just WRONG. She is very self-motivated and works her ass off all day both on the phones and by email. Not only that, she is quite willing to take calls from overseas late at night. There are time-stamps on these things to prove it. Everyone in the New York office (with the exception of these two) loves having her on the team.

If the comptroller and his sidekick had left it at the snide remarks, Lucy would have been able to handle it, but they couldn't. They had to make her PAY...

[continued after I've had some breakfast]

[Dips]

Part 2

One day Lucy got an email from her boss that told her that they were thinking of renting an office in Boston for her and the other Massachusetts employee.

Needless to say, Lucy was dead set against that and pointed out renting and furnishing an office would cost money and would not contribute to her productivity.

The boss told her that the comptroller had suggested the idea as a way to foster more of a "team" atmosphere and had set aside money in the budget to do it.

At this point some of you are probably wondering how the comptroller manages to keep his job since he has no budget sense and all of his ideas are horrible. You're not alone. Lucy doesn't get it either. She knows that the comptroller and the boss are old friends who go way back and that the boss, who is a nice guy, just has a blind spot for the comptroller. Either that, or there's blackmail involved.

Lucy argued her case vigorously, but the boss didn't listen. They leased some office space next door to their Boston branch, bought furniture and paid for utilities. They spent $40,000 setting up the office.

She warned her boss that she would be at the Boston office from 9 to 5 (GMT -5:00) on weekdays and he needed to understand that she would do NO WORK from her home any more. He accepted those terms because he *still* thought it was a good idea.

And Lucy had to start commuting to Boston every day to do the same thing she was doing at home.

Actually, no, she wasn't.

The first week was spent getting her equipment set up instead of being productive. They hadn't bought her a phone, a fax or a computer. So she borrowed a phone from the office next door and asked the comptroller's assistant for those things.

The assistant told her she was expected to use the same equipment as she used when she worked at home. They'd pay to have it shipped.

Lucy told her that would work for the fax, but the phone and computer she had been using at home were hers, not the company's. And, no, she had no intention of giving up her own phone and computer so the company could move them to Boston.

But Lucy dutifully commuted to Boston every day to sit there from 9 to 5 until her equipment arrived. Once it was there and installed, she'd be able to contribute, right?

Wrong. She was busy in the mornings supporting the offices in Europe. But that was it. The other offices were in Australia and Asia; their business hours and Lucy's did not coincide, which made getting support difficult. Too bad, so sad. Talk to my boss; he insisted I work these hours.

[continued after I drive my daughter to her friend's house]

[Dips]

How It Ended

The boss was becoming kind of frustrated that Lucy's productivity had gone down so much. She pointed out that she was only sticking to the deal he had made with her and forwarded copies of the emails, just in case he forgot.

She did understand that she could lose her job over this, but she didn't really care. She was unhappy enough over the situation to be willing to walk and was already looking for other work. And it was not easy for her in other ways. People with a strong work ethic don't enjoy sitting in an empty office not doing much. She had to keep reminding herself not to give in and validate their poor decision. So she stuck to her passive-agressive guns figuring it would be over soon one way or the other.

And she won. The boss soon "decided" that making her commute to Boston was counterproductive and OK'd her working at home again. It actually worked out even better for her. When they realized how much making her unhappy could cost them, they started requesting that their overseas offices schedule their support calls with Lucy. So she still takes calls at odd hours, but she isn't forced to plan her life around their convenience.

The downside is that the boss *still* hasn't fired the comptroller nor is he ignoring his awful advice. And Lucy still has to deal with his assistant when it comes to getting her expenses approved.

[friendofjimmyk]

Is this one of the companies that our lovely government approved a bail-out for? This shit just chaps my ass! Now, they have an office, that cost them $40,000 to open only to have her boss decide that she was more productive WHERE SHE WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!

[persephone]

Now, they have an office, that cost them $40,000 to open only to have her boss decide that she was more productive WHERE SHE WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!

And my favorite part is that she TOLD her boss before the move she would be more productive where she was originally! I love when long distance bosses think they know better how things work than the people who actually do the work / are on site.

When I used to be the "site" manager at a bar (I was the highest manager actually on site, the GM owned about 10 different places and was rarely actually there), the GM came up with some really stupid ideas for some of our busiest times -- not letting me schedule who I needed, telling me to discontinue sales / specials / events. I tried to tell him he was setting himself up for trouble but he wouldn't listen to me. So I said to my other managers, "What do I know? I just work here and am on site every day" and did exactly what the GM wanted.

It didn't even take 2 weeks before he realized I was right and backed off and let me run my restaurant.

[Dips]

Is this one of the companies that our lovely government approved a bail-out for?

They asked for one. I won't say if they got it or not.

I do think it would be funny to imagine the comptroller trying to justify the $40,000 expenditure to a government reviewer:

"I see here that you spent $40,000 renting and equiping an office for two employees and now only one works there (the other Massachusetts employee is still stuck commuting to Boston). Why did you do that?"

"If I can't own and work at a lakeside house. Nobody should."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm stuck commuting into an office every day. I'm miserable. Why shouldn't everyone else be as well?"

"Sooooo...your reason is.....spite?"

"Exactly."

"Okay. I'll write that down. $40,000. RE: Spite."

[Boozy]

That was a good read, Dips.

My company employs a woman with many of the same qualities as this comptroller. She also can't see the forest for the trees.

[Broomjockey]

you know, it's one thing to be hideously spiteful to a co-worker, and trying to make their life miserable, it's another thing all together to try and ruin the company to do it. $40,000 is more than some people make in a year, and to spend that just to try and get a dig at someone? Height of idiocy. They seem to forget that if the company falls, they're gone too.