Office Nonsense: What a Waste of Energy

We all knew it had to happen at some point…well, here we go! My first office aggravation entry! Whoo hoo! Exciting! So, without any further adieu, I present my first awkward situation and the first time that I’ve put myself out there as someone NOT to be wrecklessly and witlessly tread upon in my office.

For the last year and a half, I’ve worked for a SMALL financial institution (less than 15 people). We take in money, send out money, invest money, etc. My role in this company is as a Loan Officer. Folks come to me and ask for loans, I underwrite their request, and hopefully we sign a deal so they can receive financing and my company can earn a few bucks.

Once a loan is signed, there is a specific process for the borrower to access money from the company. They submit a request, I put together a few forms, and the forms get sent around for various signatures so the money is approved to go to the borrower. This usually works like clockwork, but my latest set of forms to go around the office didn’t quite work right…

The first person who gets the forms held on to them for a WEEK before passing them to the second person. The second person signed them quickly and passed them down to the Secretary. The Secretary did her part and put them on the financial officer’s desk…where they sat for two days, untouched. In other words, a process that normally takes 2 – 3 days wound up taking 10 days. The borrower started to get angry and I looked like the fool since – to the borrower – I am the public face of the organization.

It gets better.

We tried to send the check overnight and that didn’t work (which is odd – I mean we paid for the overnight service and didn’t get it). So as the public face of the organization to this borrower, I started getting some harsh e-mails and nasty responses on the phone. Nothing I could do – the check was literally in the mail and the process to get it there was out of my hands starting on day one.

After a particularly nasty e-mail/phone call combination, I sent an internal e-mail to the folks involved in getting the check out of our office and in the borrower’s hands. I couched the e-mail as an exasperated plea for help. I wanted to know what I could do to make my particular part of this process better (I figured let me take the “I must be wrong here” route since I knew that in such small organizations, no one ever raises their hand and says, “My fault. Sorry.”). In addition, I reported that our company had lost a measure of our standing with the borrower and I, too, had lost some measure (which is the truth).

The response that I received from this e-mail was way out of left field. I sent out a plea for help to do my job better and the Secretary responded to everyone with a few paragraphs of how this problem was not her fault (which was in bold and italicized). My first reaction was, “Huh? No one is blaming anyone here!”

Included in her response was a criticism of my time at the organization (apparently if you’re not a “lifer” in this place, then you are not allowed to ask how this check-sending system can be better managed). But what was most insulting to me in the Secretary’s e-mail was the final line where she completely rejected my statement that both the company and I had lost a measure of standing with the borrower. How the hell would the Secretary know anything about my borrower other than their name and address? The Secretary wouldn’t know – she made a statement that belittled the year and a half I’ve put into building my relationship with this borrower.

What type of response is this to a plea for help?

I had to take action so I responded to everyone saying simply that the Secretary should not take offense because no one was point a finger at her. I went on to talk about many of my recent dealings with this client and how they were obviously not happy with the product that we were giving them when they can get better deals from our competitors.

And the Secretary’s next response? She didn’t want to talk about this over the e-mail, but in person. So now this dope is getting offended that I dared to respond to her? What the hell is that about? How insecure must a person be in their job to be offended when someone else asks for assistance? In an office with less than 15 people, this type of psychotic, neurotic behavior becomes a glaring issue. Oh, and I won’t go into how pretty much everyone in the office has been telling me to deal gently with the Secretary because she doesn’t do her job well or how they’ve told me that I need to follow-up with her over and over and over again to be sure a task is complete. I don’t have time for that type of inefficiency. We have a process to get money on the street – either it works or it doesn’t.

What is completely mind-boggling to me is that the Secretary was absolutely not wrong in her role in the process! She performed her role as she was supposed to – no problems at all. Yet she gets offended when I ask how I can make my part of the process better?

To add icing to the cake – in a small office, people gossip too much. The week after this happened, I had a few road visits that kept me out of the office for a few days. In this time, the Secretary was sure to gossip with some of the other staff about how I was a rude asshole. I ask for help, she gets offended and defends herself, I tell her no one is blaming her, and I’m an asshole for it. Sounds logical, right?

When I did get back to the office, I had to call her from office to answer a question. She didn’t answer her phone. So I went to her office and asked her and a co-worker some questions and I got the cold shoulder from her and a stare that could have pierced a diamond. What a dopey, stupid response…

There is a lesson learned on my behalf, though. From this point forward, I cannot deal with the insecure people in my office (of which the Secretary may be the only one). They need to be left off of my e-mails and they need to be excluded from my pleas for assistance. I hope that the organization learns something from this, too. I hope that they learn that in a small office setting where resources are scarce, we do not have the ability to keep people on board who are constantly trying to defend the necessity of their presence. In other words, where there’s smoke there’s fire and the Secretary’s vehement defense of her role in the process (when it was never questioned) and her offended response to an ask for help is a blatant and obvious submission of her uselessness in the organization.