Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tales Of Private Sector Efficiency [UPDATED]

UPDATE: I have been humbled. Although, in my defense, my particular story is not what this is getting at, I still had to append this post because of it.

I work from home, for a Fortune 100 company. I know that because I am reminded of it all the fucking time, not because I give a shit about the Fortune 100. When my home office was set up, the company agreed to subsidize my internet service. That is great, I'm not complaining about that. In order to receive said subsidy, I have to submit a monthly expense report. At this point, it is already stupid, because they know I'm using the internet because I could not possibly work otherwise.

What I used to be able to do, until just now, was submit the expense and call it a recurring allowance, thus obviating the need to document the expense (via a copy of the bill). This makes sense, because it is an allowance, not a reimbursement. It was easy, and took me maybe 5 minutes, once a month, on the company website. Click, click, type, click, submit, done.

My last submission, of today, was rejected. My boss (who has to approve each submission) said that from now on, I have to fax the front page of my bill. No problem, right? Wrong. You see, I have paperless billing. Means I have no "front page."

"Ah, but stupid person," you say, "just go on to AT&Ts website and print the bill from there." Well, I'd be happy to, except my company computer (which I am required to have) still has IE 6.0 on it. That's not a typo. Well, guess what? IE 6.0 is so fucking old that AT&Ts website doesn't support it. So I CANNOT print the bill off the web page. And I have no printer attached to my home computer. As an aside, I do not blog from my work computer, as I am a good, loyal, policy-following (where not rendered impossible by ancient technology) worker bee. So, in order to comply, it appears I will have to physically move the printer (my personal printer, mind you) that is hooked up to my wife's computer to my personal computer, hook it up, use my computer to print off the bill, so I can then scan it via the work printer so I can fax it to my boss. All so I can get my allotment for internet service that yes, I use, but, I upgraded to accommodate the demands of working from home.

Next time someone bitches to me about how inefficient the gubmint is, I will brain them.

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