Fiscal Reporting Purposes: The New Corporate Excuse

This is so rich. It turns out if you have a really big important company you don't have to pay people who perform services for you, at least not on time. And it's all because of reporting policies – imagine that! This is all so well encapsulated in some emails I have that I'll just post them here. They're a bit modified, of course, so no one loses business or employment over it.

The first email was sent after said accountant returned my call requesting payment for a short consulting job (less than $5,000.00 worth of work) which I had an associate perform in October. At the time I called, the bill was 15 days late on a purchase order with NET 45 terms. I asked the person to respond via email since I received the call in the car.

"Per our conversation, your invoice #XXXXX dated 10/XX/06 for $X,XXX.XX, would normally be paid by our terms of which would be due December XX, 2006. Due to a Corporate Directive during the month of December, XYZ Company suspends vendor payments for fiscal reporting purposes. Our payment schedule will continue the first week of January 2007. I appreciate your concern and thank you for your patience. Please contact me if you have any further questions."

Gonna have to get me one of them thar' Corporate Die-rectives!! They come in handy.

I replied ever so politely and blind copied it to my contact at the client company. He was a bit embarrassed and shot me this apology and, uh, sarcastic yet accurate "translation":

"I think the translation goes something like this.

We don’t care about the cash flow of other businesses; we want to try to bogusly inflate our bottom line by a few nickels by not entering liabilities into the system and try to reach our goals by hook or by crook.

I wonder how many raw material vendors they are holding payment on? I think I am going to cut and paste her response and send it off to all of my utilities and car loan holders this month. Sorry about that, but it appears we are probably no different than any other billion dollar corporation that you deal with."

I felt bad for him since it was in no way his fault; I sent this reply:

"Thanks; humans invented greed, but it seems that large corporations sure are working night and day to perfect it. Don’t worry about me – I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't have a bullet-proof sense of humor about this kind of nonsense. Honestly, the accountant sounded oh, so sensible on the phone, but I requested this email. I’m glad – though amazed – that I got it; seeing it in black & white is nothing short of High Comedy. Your remark was my immediate thought also, i.e., to put off paying my phone and rent bill as part of a new 'Fiscal Policy Initiative'. We could guess how well that sh*t would float!

Rest assured that ____ was paid within a week of the excellent work she performed for XYZ Company. As for me, business is good and my kids will not be lacking any 'Figgie pudding' this Christmas, regardless of corporate Scrooges, multi-national Grinches or the morbid Mr. Potters of a shadowy Industrial Complex.

So please don’t be embarrassed on account of their treatment of 'the little guy'. The Whos down in Whoville will be sated with plenty of Roast Beast this year.

Merry Christmas!"

The only thing I'll add here is this. I've known cases where consultants have, maybe rightly, flipped out when they were not paid on time. Generally that doesn't help much. Hopefully we can find clever and creative ways to shed some light on these unfair practices and show these companies to be the schoolyard bullies that they are. I choose to do that with humor – it's legal ... right?

To whom it may concern

Every once in a while, I find a notice posted at a business client to be extremely funny. Usually this is because the poster(s) of the notice freely inserted crude colloquialisms for bodily excretions into an otherwise professional-looking document. Such is the style of a document I discovered at a company which I will refer to as XYZ Company. I decided to leave in the misspellings and grammatical errors in the interest of authenticity. The notice reads as follows:

To Whom It May Concern

I know that times at XYZ Company have been difficult these last few years and a lot of things have changed. All I would like to ask of you, no expect of you is that you do not take your anger, frustration's or your lack of hygiene out on the bathrooms or its surroundings.

Obviously we have a hand full of sick fu#$'s that don't think that there is anything wrong with shi#$*g on the toilet seats, wiping boogers on any surface then can find. Also if you think that a toilet is not working don't use it, we don't care to see your business. We have a lot of garbage cans in the bathrooms so put your garbage in them and not on the floor.

If you find yourself in the lunchroom treat it as one not a place to leave or throw your unwanted food or wrappers.

If you have any questions on what you just read, please quit your job and don't socialize with other people. Thank you from all of us.

Interestingly enough, I was told that a lot of the behavior stopped after the posting. Maybe criticism from peers is a good deterrent? Unclear, but worth considering for management in any business.

Burger King Outsources

My wife is funny

My wife, who is very beautiful, is also very funny. I know you already assumed she has a sense of humor since, after all, she did marry me.

But tonight we were eating at Friendly's up in Westlake and she mentioned that my mother-in-law had earlier reported the hometown news that Grove City College is buying the Grove City Diner in Grove City, PA. I immediately lit up.

"That means they're going to..."

"Probably tear it down," she said. "Yeah, there are going to be a lot of homeless cockroaches in Grove City."

That was the money quote! "Hey, did you just make that up?" I said laughing.

She said she had. That was choice. You got to understand how bad the diner was. She used to work there in high school.

I had another friend, Scott, who worked there when he was in high school. He was funny in his own way. He told me about how one owner had posted a sign on the Coke dispenser which read "DON'T MESS WITH THIS G*D D*MN MACHINE". I think he was probably the tenth troglodyte to run the joint. "I don't care if you use profanity sometimes," Scott said, "but don't write it on the Coke machine I have to use!"