View Full Version : Customer being ridiculous
Bigwig at one customer is going to be out of the office for nearly a month and someone else (who I also deal with) is going to have to approve invoices from my company. Bigwig asked me to provide a detailed breakdown for their charges for each possible variation (save the customs duties which are driven by shipment value). I did it up and sent it to customer. Took a large amount of time.
Not good enough. He wants a "mockup" complete on an invoice form, in every possible permutation, which would be about 20. Blank invoices don't exist outside our system. Customer actually said I better get busy with white out! >:(
Are you kidding me? Said fill-in is used to seeing invoices, so they're not an unknown quantity. All that's needed is a detailed listing of charges in all their possible variations, I've already provided.
Frankly, trying to do this with whiteout and physically pasting (taping!) text from a printed out Word document is probably not going to work much on the formatting. There will be plenty of places on invoice that wouldn't work on anyway. Bigwig is going to gripe if formatting isn't the same. Given that I'm used to my vintage manual typewriter at home (I pound out letters on it regularly), I daresay it will be quicker to do this on the IBM Selectric II in another department!
What a mess. And no, we can't pushback on this one. Customer is being cranky about something unrelated to me, so boss said no. Believe me, I asked!
I've actually decided that I'm going to haul my 40+ year old manual into work from home, just so I can work at my own desk and not be stuck on another floor for hours on end. I might as well have some fun with this and the big boss' reaction from seeing me pound away on my vintage manual should be good for a few laughs, as well as the younger folks who barely remember electronic typewriters, let alone a manual. The fact that I can actually type quite well on this thing should be good shock value.:moon:
:devil:
geez - too bad this can't be made into a video anonymously posted on YouTube under the category of Outrageous Customer Requests. I bet this guy is the same way in other situations where he can bully people.
But in the meantime, I agree that seeing someone type on a manual typewriter is going to be a first for lots of your colleagues!
iris lilies
10-22-13, 11:04pm
white out. manual typewriter.
that's is a scream! 'though plenty annoying, that's for sure.
Do not forget carbon paper.
Do not forget carbon paper.
There's.actually an unopened pkg of.carbon paper.I recently.found in supply room! ;)
sweetana3
10-23-13, 5:19am
This is picture worthy and might be a great cartoon for a future office newsletter or customer service ad. Properly redacted of course. I am not sure who would believe it without a picture.
My husband said he thought this could happen at his Fortune 500 company because the people making the decision have no thought of cost or effort to provide worthless info.
mtnlaurel
10-23-13, 7:46am
As someone that's spent a lot of time in Customer Service type jobs.... a skill I learned somewhere along the way in middle school comes in handy.....
Smiling, sitting up straight "Yes Ma'am. I'll get right to it." While under my desk I have my hands to sides of my leg with middle finger extended.
There's something about some secret devious behavior in powerless situations that alleviates stress for me.... and makes me giggle inside.
I know, totally immature - but it works for me & I don't think it harms anyone too terribly much ;p
Maybe in a gentle way you can let client know the many steps you went through to make it happen and you can win him over as an advocate (?)
iris lilies
10-23-13, 10:16am
Do not forget carbon paper.
This made me spew coffee, haha!
SteveinMN
10-23-13, 11:41am
My husband said he thought this could happen at his Fortune 500 company because the people making the decision have no thought of cost or effort to provide worthless info.
It happened for sure at mine. At the end, my workgroup was reporting our time differently in three systems, one of which no one ever looked at. >.< I soon figured out that not even these micromanagers would take the time to reconcile all three systems, so for most of my last year-and-a-half, my time reporting was pretty much fiction. Plausible fiction, but fiction nonetheless.
Tradd, you'll have to tell us if your boss develops a backbone after seeing you hammer away at your old manual typewriter...
SteveinMN
10-23-13, 11:44am
And in the spirit of the original post, today's Dilbert is a riff about the productivity of employees (particularly engineers). One of the cubeville comments was:
@lostitall
"Our own micro-manager recently asked his team leads to predict what each software developer will be doing - on a daily basis - for the next 3 months."
When faced with a similar situation, I replied "preparing for the zombie apocalypse" and earned yet another trip to HR.
A friend suggested I try this in MS Paint. I use it so rarely that didn't even occur to me. I'll give it a try this afternoon. I suspect the typewriter will be faster, though...
As someone that's spent a lot of time in Customer Service type jobs.... a skill I learned somewhere along the way in middle school comes in handy.....
Smiling, sitting up straight "Yes Ma'am. I'll get right to it." While under my desk I have my hands to sides of my leg with middle finger extended.
There's something about some secret devious behavior in powerless situations that alleviates stress for me.... and makes me giggle inside.
I know, totally immature - but it works for me & I don't think it harms anyone too terribly much ;p
e
Actually I was doing that while on the phone with the customer. I regularly present my middle finger to the computer monitor after emails from this fellow.
Don't forget the cover sheet for your TPS form, Tradd.
I think a viewing of Office Space is in order for the weekend.
And I thought the bureacratic overload was bad in my job....
Well, unless you folks know a workaround for the below, no go doing it on Paint.
Work scanners only allow pdf format. Paint won't allow me to open pdf files.
Any way around this?
For some idiotic reason, someone in IT who used to work there seems to have turned off the capability to scan in any other format than pdf. I had to go deep into the settings - copier/scanner not user friendly. The jpeg and tiff settings were there, but when you tapped on them, nothing happened. They were grayed out.
I found out with a lot of playing around in our system that you can email yourself documents in tiff format. I had done that and was beginning to work in MS Paint when a coworker who heard about my project told me there is the capability for draft invoices in our system. I didn't even know that existed, as it's not obvious.
So now, I can just input whatever the charges are, print draft invoice/email to myself, and be done. Will go MUCH quicker. I can do this on a current shipment that fits the parameters of origin/destination container size, etc.
sweetana3
10-24-13, 5:45am
When I shared the above with hubby, he said that is the big reason telework loses out. It is the combined knowledge of the group sometimes is really necessary. This type of unplanned collaboration happened a lot at our office.
When I shared the above with hubby, he said that is the big reason telework loses out. It is the combined knowledge of the group sometimes is really necessary. This type of unplanned collaboration happened a lot at our office.
+1
ToomuchStuff
10-24-13, 11:30pm
I would certainly be careful (and bring it to your bosses attention) about having the variations floating around, with your license info. I am wondering if they are trying to submit them without you, or provide them to get a competitive bid?
Also make SURE you keep track of the amount of time this takes, as this is a billable event making all these.
I would certainly be careful (and bring it to your bosses attention) about having the variations floating around, with your license info. I am wondering if they are trying to submit them without you, or provide them to get a competitive bid?
Also make SURE you keep track of the amount of time this takes, as this is a billable event making all these.
This wouldn't relate to my license at all. Customer already has a rate list submitted to them that they approved (this is mandatory, by regulations from the Federal Maritime Commission), so they have all the charges anyway. The bigwig is being excessive in his desire to make things as easy as possible for the woman who will be approving my company's invoices in his month long absence. So, mocked up invoice showing 1 x 40' container from Yantian to Chicago on X carrier, specify ocean freight rate, fuel surcharge, customs clearance fee, delivery free, container chassis rental fee, etc. Then same thing with 1 x 40' refrigerated container from Yantian to Chicago with Y carrier...
I emailed the invoice mockups to customer today. There were only 3. Since they have shipments in the pipeline that only cover three of the possible invoice variations, GM talked them into allowing me to do only those 3, rather than all 20. Saved me a ton of time! Glad that project is.over!
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