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[Great Order]

Hair's never been thick, it's always been fine. Made people think I straightened it because it laid flat.

Appreciate the prayer though, maybe God'll intervene.

[martinuzz]

May Jah grant you dreads that hang to the ground

[King Zultan]

Bleed over from another station on the radio, I don't want to listen to that shit that's why I'm on a completely different station, and I have no idea why it's doing this all the sudden I haven't moved the antenna or anything like that.

Probably wouldn't piss me off as much if it wasn't cutting in with a station that plays such shit music.

[Eschar]

Hmm, the "always download [type]" and "choose where to download" settings in Firefox actually don't work. Behavior does not match stated function.

[Loud Whispers]

Hair's never been thick, it's always been fine. Made people think I straightened it because it laid flat.

Appreciate the prayer though, maybe God'll intervene.

"Please God... Give them 80s glamrock power..."

[scriver]

I'm with you GO. Male pattern baldness is a terrible curse, I'd say its the number one proof that the garden of Eden story is true

[Loud Whispers]

I'm with you GO. Male pattern baldness is a terrible curse, I'd say its the number one proof that the garden of Eden story is true

We have the power to defy God

[McTraveller]

Paying twice for the same injury!  Urgent care didn't do its job well, so had to go to emergency department anyway to get an arm fracture reduced.  Two splints, two dozen x rays, plus sedation* second time to manhandle the bones to get them aligned...

(*This was for a young kid. They really had to manhandle the arm to realign the bones 2.5 days after the initial break.)

[nenjin]

God this client I have.

The wife doesn't know what she's doing. The CPA's English is shaky at best. For over a year we've been working on their accounting. The wife makes mistakes constantly and can't juggle the complexities of their business. The CPA is out of patience. Both are turning to me to fix their problems, despite the fact that I don't have access to the data sheet that both of them look at to drive how they use the software. Nor do I want access to those sheets otherwise I'm functioning as their bookkeeper.

They've already wracked up over $1,000 in fees for my time constantly fixing their accounting, consulting them and trying to make sense of what the CPA expects and what the wife does.

Meanwhile the husband sits above the whole thing just going "Is this month done yet? We really need it done."

I told them to hire a bookkeeper but they don't want to until their new building is built. Which is fucking bullshit. He just doesn't want to spend the money and is happy for me, his wife and his CPA to battle it out amongst ourselves so he can just continue to buy and sell trucks and not pay attention to any of this shit.

I'm so sick of this. I'm so sick of being caught in the middle of someone who is unqualified to handle the amount of business they're doing and a CPA who basically refuses to accept how the software generates accounting data and expects every historical transaction to be correct at the time it's created, which is completely beyond this lady. No offense to her, she's super nice. She was a former school teacher before her husband declared she's doing data entry for his truck selling business. She doesn't understand the financials, she just works off a data sheet her husband provides and tries to make sense of it and input it our software. And she makes mistakes constantly. Which, to be honest, when a single transaction has over 20 purchase orders associated with it, mistakes will happen.

I want to be out from under these people so bad but there's no one I can foist this off to in good conscious and we can't fire them because they're paying their bills. It's just such a drain on my time and energy essentially being the bridge between them.

[Loud Whispers]

Reminds me of the conversation I had with one of my new managers

Me: You know, they're going to ask you to do finance for our studies but you should just say no. The amount of work they're actually asking you to do is too much, and you won't be able to actually do it without knowing exactly what is done in the studies. You would either have to work on the studies or be able to look through all the paper and digital logs all day. They really ought to hire an actual accountant who can manage this

Her: No, it's no trouble at all, I'm more than happy to help

Me: I cannot stress enough, they are not asking for a one-off bit of assistance, but they are asking for continual invoices of multiple studies across a research unit. This is something that they should hire an accountant for

Her: No it's really not a problem

[fast forward two months. She accepted to do the finance and then realised she couldn't do it. Not for lack of effort or talent, but because the scope of the job really should go to an accountant. Then she started getting pressured by the COO to deliver weekly reports and came down on me hard for failing to support her, even though I warned her well in advance she should not accept the job as she was set up to fail from the start].

Things really took a heated turn when she accused me of being easily distracted, of being lazy, of always making tea instead of doing my job. She kept asking if I was seeing patients because I did not have enough work and was just helping with the studies. At one point she came to me with a query about finance and asked me to help her, I was actually happy to help but I asked her what help she needed and instead of telling me she kept trying to refer me to an email chain. I read the email chain and still did not know what help she wanted. I explained how if her problem was too complex to be explained in a sentence then I did not have the time to help her [hilariously, I had just helped one of the research nurses make an invoice because she asked me "can you help draft an invoice for this study?" which is an actionable request]. She gets mad and escalates things until I'm formally requested to work under her at least two contracted days a week. The whole thing just gets embarassing after I have to repeatedly explain:

1. They only saw me when I was on a break. In between seeing patients. On my break I make tea. 2. Patients come in every day of the week. I was only able to help with the admin because I had some free time due to covid-19 causing study closures. 3. Seeing patients was my job, helping with the finance was something I just did on a voluntary basis. I told them and my director to just inform the COO that weekly updates on finance was impossible without hiring an accountant, because I was clinical staff, not admin staff, and they were being incredibly cruel to censure me for not doing more when by definition, I had gone far beyond and above my pay grade just to help them. I was later able to successfully get my salary regraded up on this basis.

After resolving all of this and making it clear to them they were fortunate they got any help from me since this was all unpaid work, my director tried to get me to teach this really lovely girl who hated numbers & spreadsheets how to draft these invoices. I asked her if she wanted to do this work and she said no, but they keep pushing her to do it. Eventually I ask my director about this and he asks me if there's any way I can spread my "enthusiasm" to her and I said: "Well I make spreadsheets for fun." He replied "ah."

It does still amuse me to this day though that I did such a good job of it, all the new hires thought it was my full time job

[nenjin]

1. They only saw me when I was on a break. In between seeing patients. On my break I make tea. 2. Patients come in every day of the week. I was only able to help with the admin because I had some free time due to covid-19 causing study closures. 3. Seeing patients was my job, helping with the finance was something I just did on a voluntary basis. I told them and my director to just inform the COO that weekly updates on finance was impossible without hiring an accountant, because I was clinical staff, not admin staff, and they were being incredibly cruel to censure me for not doing more when by definition, I had gone far beyond and above my pay grade just to help them. I was later able to successfully get my salary regraded up on this basis.

Christ I thought I had it bad. Clinician, doing......finance? How fucked is your office if finance needs you to cross those boundaries to do their job.

Spoiler: A Modern Male Rants About Modern Business Life (click to show/hide)

The whole "read the email chain" I know that one well. "Please, I'm overwhelmed, do all the intellectual legwork of getting up to speed so you can give me an answer." I really try to avoid doing that to people at work, it's such a giant FU.

The best part is, I wasn't told until after these people had been signed and promised things that they needed to back enter an entire year worth of work (it's the nearing the end of 2023 and we're in....March data for 2023 still. So we're actually losing ground.)

In a face to face meeting with me, the CPA, the husband and wife, their business partner and his daughter (who I was separately implementing on this trip) the CPA straight up told them, in adorable ESL Chinese, that they were both her biggest pain in the ass clients and she was going to up their rates and create a team in her office to deal with their crap. I told them I would start billing them hourly for dealing with their accounting or discussions around their accounting. I've actually been generous and just skipped logging hours talking to his wife.

I've repeated myself so many fucking times, verbally and in email, about 1) why things are happening the way they are 2) how to avoid having things happen this way 3) what everyone's options are in the event something like, oh, reopening a 2022 invoice in 2023 and making changes and what that means from an accounting perspective, that it's come to the point where I believe no one is reading and taking responsibility for any decision making. The CPA is in her early 60s. Nice lady, but she's sick of this shit and so am I. But I just can't get her to interact practically with what I say, and her meaning is hard to understand when it's half broken sentences and I need really specific clarity before I go shove my hands wrist deep in their data for the 30th time. What kicked all this "mildly upsetness" off was an email where, just a casual examination of what the CPA said was a problem didn't line up with the reality in the data.

We're all fucking tired, we're all making mistakes, we all want someone else to deal with this problem. And we're all working at it, no joke. I know the efforts of each side of this triangle and no one is slacking. There's just no goddamn end in sight until they hire a bookkeeper I can fully communicate with and train, that I hope has enough wit to untangle this mass of shit.

And that is just one part of hand-holding I've done today, I have at least 6 other clients with a direct line to me that I'm helping with their own, completely unique problems. At least those people, most of them, eventually taper off in needing me. These people have been an every week consistent, confused, at times combative, mess since 3rd quarter 2023. The fact I'm billing them is now cold consolation because it's not like I'm getting that as a bonus. I know more about the basics of finance now despite never having any interest in finance topics in college or elsewhere, just by virtue of being forced to deal with it. And yet I have zero interest into parlaying that into more finance-related things.

I *almost* had another disaster looming right after Thanksgiving because another business is shifting to our system from a lower tier offering of ours, and now their accounting needs to be examined and configured for that. When I was there 6 months ago and introduced myself to the room full of women who handle all that, I got nothing but pushback and hostility to any process change. These same people complained about how much they pay and the cost of having me and my team come on site. While asking to upgrade to our more expensive, more complicated software. They recently just paid an invoice for my boss' visit there in 2018. But they said they're going to move forward and then the CFO started emailing me about it and I was preparing for the shittiest 3 day implementation/conversion I've ever experienced.....but eventually they just said "we'll do a minimum configuration but continue to hand enter." I was like THANK FUCKING GOD. They can just use the default configuration and I don't have to try to know as much as they do about financials.

I'm out there slaying demons every day by the dozen, and more just keep erupting from the ground around me.

[hector13]

… and his daughter (who I was separately implementing on this trip)…

Is that what they’re calling it these days?

[Great Order]

I'm with you GO. Male pattern baldness is a terrible curse, I'd say its the number one proof that the garden of Eden story is true

Pain in the arse being a trans woman with it though. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if women got it too, but right now I might as well have TRANS shaved into my hair.

I'm hoping this works, if not it's wigs and trying to save up for a hair transplant.

[Schmaven]

I bit into a potsticker and was promptly burned by the hot oils hiding within.  After some quick application of vitamin E oil to combat the burn, I returned to the potstickers.  This time carefully biting into it in such a way as to avoid the hot oils.  But I failed; And was again burned by hot oil, and in the exact same spot.  Now the skin has fallen off due to the double burn.  However, the remainder of the potstickers were very delicious, and arguably worth the burn, though more caution would be good next time.

[ChairmanPoo]

Reminds me of the conversation I had with one of my new managers

Me: You know, they're going to ask you to do finance for our studies but you should just say no. The amount of work they're actually asking you to do is too much, and you won't be able to actually do it without knowing exactly what is done in the studies. You would either have to work on the studies or be able to look through all the paper and digital logs all day. They really ought to hire an actual accountant who can manage this

Her: No, it's no trouble at all, I'm more than happy to help

Me: I cannot stress enough, they are not asking for a one-off bit of assistance, but they are asking for continual invoices of multiple studies across a research unit. This is something that they should hire an accountant for

Her: No it's really not a problem

[fast forward two months. She accepted to do the finance and then realised she couldn't do it. Not for lack of effort or talent, but because the scope of the job really should go to an accountant. Then she started getting pressured by the COO to deliver weekly reports and came down on me hard for failing to support her, even though I warned her well in advance she should not accept the job as she was set up to fail from the start].

Things really took a heated turn when she accused me of being easily distracted, of being lazy, of always making tea instead of doing my job. She kept asking if I was seeing patients because I did not have enough work and was just helping with the studies. At one point she came to me with a query about finance and asked me to help her, I was actually happy to help but I asked her what help she needed and instead of telling me she kept trying to refer me to an email chain. I read the email chain and still did not know what help she wanted. I explained how if her problem was too complex to be explained in a sentence then I did not have the time to help her [hilariously, I had just helped one of the research nurses make an invoice because she asked me "can you help draft an invoice for this study?" which is an actionable request]. She gets mad and escalates things until I'm formally requested to work under her at least two contracted days a week. The whole thing just gets embarassing after I have to repeatedly explain:

1. They only saw me when I was on a break. In between seeing patients. On my break I make tea. 2. Patients come in every day of the week. I was only able to help with the admin because I had some free time due to covid-19 causing study closures. 3. Seeing patients was my job, helping with the finance was something I just did on a voluntary basis. I told them and my director to just inform the COO that weekly updates on finance was impossible without hiring an accountant, because I was clinical staff, not admin staff, and they were being incredibly cruel to censure me for not doing more when by definition, I had gone far beyond and above my pay grade just to help them. I was later able to successfully get my salary regraded up on this basis.

After resolving all of this and making it clear to them they were fortunate they got any help from me since this was all unpaid work, my director tried to get me to teach this really lovely girl who hated numbers & spreadsheets how to draft these invoices. I asked her if she wanted to do this work and she said no, but they keep pushing her to do it. Eventually I ask my director about this and he asks me if there's any way I can spread my "enthusiasm" to her and I said: "Well I make spreadsheets for fun." He replied "ah."

It does still amuse me to this day though that I did such a good job of it, all the new hires thought it was my full time job

Did she cone from the private sector? Because I'm having similar struggles with a coworker who volunteers her work (and occasionally mine) randomly

We had a recent scuffle because she basically told me some other team was going to follow a patient, and then she went behind my back and made arrangements for me to follow that patient which I didnt know existed. She said she did it to ensure the patient didnt fall between the cracks. But what she did ENSURED the patient fell between the cracks