coworker rant
Someone I have to work with regularly is constantly astounding me with her incompetence. She's an accountant, for crying out loud; I'm not. Yet it's left to me to find the mistakes in her work. She's continuously confused about how to count things, what things to count. In past meetings, she emphatically stated we'd been doing things one way, based on a database management system we had. Her boss questioned her, "Are you sure?" and she said "OF COURSE, I've been doing it that way for two years!" This repeated several times in our meeting until we looked at the records, and clearly, obviously, she had never done it that way. She didn't even own up to being wrong. It's like she doesn't even know what she's supposed to be doing. Or what she did. Or how to do the next thing.
When she had a problem with how I was doing something recently, she went to the MRI tech, asked her to come to me and show me the proper way to enter notes. I know this, I know the difference between entering notes and entering billing discrepancies. So the MRI tech showed me, I said "I know" and then we puzzled over why accounted wanted this to be explained to me. When I asked the accountant, she said I was doing the entry wrong. It turned out, no, I was doing what she had initially told me she wanted. Then she had changed her mind about what she wanted without telling me, and decided it was my mistake about how to use the system, but never explained what she wanted me to do. I had to figure all this out over the course of a phone conversation. She didn't even KNOW what she wanted, didn't remember what she'd told me to do. I had to talk to her for like 5 minutes until I figured out what she actually wanted, described it to her, and then she said yes.
Most recent aggravation. This morning. She sends an email to me and third party, telling third party he hadn't set up the database management tool properly because it didn't have the information she needed, please add it. I write back saying that we had plans to eventually set it up, but we hadn't needed it in three months, so she shouldn't worry about getting it right away. She calls me, saying, "what are you talking about? I needed it yesterday?" Finally I figure out she's looking at the wrong entry, has ascribed it a totally different meaning and assumed that more information was needed. I don't even KNOW how she makes this stuff up! The thing that confused her hadn't changed in two years.
it brings "creative accountancy" to its completely absurd maximum.
When she had a problem with how I was doing something recently, she went to the MRI tech, asked her to come to me and show me the proper way to enter notes. I know this, I know the difference between entering notes and entering billing discrepancies. So the MRI tech showed me, I said "I know" and then we puzzled over why accounted wanted this to be explained to me. When I asked the accountant, she said I was doing the entry wrong. It turned out, no, I was doing what she had initially told me she wanted. Then she had changed her mind about what she wanted without telling me, and decided it was my mistake about how to use the system, but never explained what she wanted me to do. I had to figure all this out over the course of a phone conversation. She didn't even KNOW what she wanted, didn't remember what she'd told me to do. I had to talk to her for like 5 minutes until I figured out what she actually wanted, described it to her, and then she said yes.
Most recent aggravation. This morning. She sends an email to me and third party, telling third party he hadn't set up the database management tool properly because it didn't have the information she needed, please add it. I write back saying that we had plans to eventually set it up, but we hadn't needed it in three months, so she shouldn't worry about getting it right away. She calls me, saying, "what are you talking about? I needed it yesterday?" Finally I figure out she's looking at the wrong entry, has ascribed it a totally different meaning and assumed that more information was needed. I don't even KNOW how she makes this stuff up! The thing that confused her hadn't changed in two years.
it brings "creative accountancy" to its completely absurd maximum.