The Expense Syndicate

I have discovered during my time in the financial services industry that small people who have no authority, garner little respect, and are frustrated because they are not higher on the corporate food chain often like to lord whatever power they think they hold over whomever they can get away with oppressing. Sometimes, given my association with the special agent who keeps the firm afloat, I escape the badgering. However, on too many occasions I am not so lucky. Consider my latest run in with Very Annoying Assistant from what I'll call The Expense Syndicate, populated by those small people referenced above.

But first, by way background, you need to know several things:

• As a temp, I used to review expenses on our old (and better) system. Very Annoying Assistant submitted the worst, most convoluted expense reports I have ever seen. She was always including itineraries and travel approvals for trips not even remotely associated with the receipts she submitted while, of course, for the submitted receipts, there was no documentation. Why VAA was even considered to review other people's expenses reports is beyond me.
  
  
• My expense reports are incredibly thorough and detailed, and when we were still using the old (and better) system, people from Accounts Payable used to e-mail me to thank me for creating such fabulous reports, supplemented with memos that should be up for literary awards.
  
  
• The new expense system has been the bane of my existence. Even though in beta testing I brought up many potential problems and ways in which it would complicate my life and suck my will to live, all of my concerns were ignored. Now Accounts Payable must audit all of the special agents reports and Amex bills for the past year because his accountant and I are having a terrible time getting his corporate Amex statements to reconcile (which I told them would happen). While I love going the extra mile for my favorite super spy, both he and I think that it is ridiculous that I should be forced to spend all this time on the phone with his personal accountant because The Expense Syndicate insists on making the creation of an expense report into some Rube Goldberg project.

The special agent and his occasional diva fits strike such fear in the hearts of The Expense Syndicate that they rarely, if ever, bother me about his reports -- except to reject our annual department Christmas lunch, which still irks me seven months later. However, his associate generally strikes people with something else not so useful, so when I submitted his taxi expenses, VAA promptly sent the report back with the following:

B: Please change the the [sic] conference/seminar expenses to taxi travel. List the conference as the business purpose. Also tell associate that he will need to keep the white credit card copy, not the pink, as it is much more legible. Thanks, VAA, Most Incompetent Person on the Planet.

Seriously. Seriously?!! She sent the report back because two cars to conferences were charged as conference-related expenses and she didn't like the color of the car receipts! When I told her that technically he was not traveling, and that the receipts were conference-related as she could see by the conference documentation I had to dig up off the web because associate had lost it, she rudely and patronizingly told me that associate was "traveling" to a function (this was even worse than when she tried to show me how to do long division, a pointless and irritating encounter I won't transcribe here). While I could see her point (I always note the special agent's cars to meetings as taxi travel; the temp had just made an entry error, and I hadn't caught it), to send something back for such a petty reason seemed a bit much to me -- especially considering that when I reviewed expenses, the Reviewing Guru was very insistent that we not send things back -- even VAA's abysmally incoherent reports -- unless it was absolutely necessary because it's simply not nice to increase someone's workload and annoy them when you can easily remedy the problem yourself (in this case, by changing the business purpose or just ignoring it -- it's a freaking taxi expense!).

Furthermore, I hate -- HATE -- being addressed as B. You know my name; print the whole thing out. I do not go for nicknames, and certainly not for initials.

However, it was mostly her utter rudeness and almost palpable schadenfreude-ish malicious glee over $30 in taxis that completely enraged me. I almost quit my job -- literally -- over this mess. I left for an hour in the sizzling heat and almost did not come back because I was so furious. This one situation is just a microcosm of the absurdity that goes on in this place every freaking day (but less today, Auntie M, because your old boss in not in the office).

In dealing with this, the associate, whose expenses are already closely scrutinized because he keeps taking cars at unauthorized times and eats his overtime meals at shady, illicit restaurants (not really -- they're just not on our corporate dining site) decided that VAA and her close friend, Annoying and Incompetent Office Manager, are emissaries of the "how to inflect maximum annoyance" mafia. While he and I don't agree on much (though since I so skilled in dissimilation, that would be news to him), we definitely see eye to eye on this. I sooooo need to quit this job.