Today began and ended with the same sort of theme.

New Guy is now invited to the boring "going over processes he hasn't done and I haven't done in years" meetings. I say boring because if you don't know how it's done and these meetings are to write down how it's done, I don't have much to contribute. However, New Guy was completely flabbergasted when he found out that if a client of ours did such-and-such a thing such as not doing X when they said they intended to do X, they got charged a lot more money instead of getting the discount they were shooting for.

"If I went from owing $6 to $6000, I'd want to talk to somebody. Even if I had ten thousand dollars in my pocket, I think I'd want to discuss it!"

The rest of us are all bored and jaded on this sort of shit, so we tried to explain it to him. Like, they had several weeks to get their books in order, and if they did not, well, what can we do? They made that life choice. Another person had a story about someone who dropped out of law school by oh, not showing up, but never bothered to officially drop out. Next thing you know, they owe $35k that's gone to collections because they didn't take care of their shit. There is only so much we can do if you don't help yourself. And sometimes that lesson is expensive.

My boss tried to make him feel better by pointing out that some of these folks affected by bad life choices actually can afford this level of issue and actually have been financially vetted for such, but I dunno if that helped.

I had another one recently sending me a sob story for why she didn't get her documents and please please please give them to her, but she still hasn't fulfilled her requirements for them yet. I forwarded this on to the proper office, who in turn was all, "Look, you can do X or Y to fulfill this and if you take this exam that is running IN A FEW DAYS, you could get this taken care of really soon, even." She of course chose NOT to do that and NOT to respond. Clearly she has decided to die on this particular hill and not bother to earn the thing she says she wants so bad and worked so hard for, because the other office is not gonna make a magical exception for her--apparently they say they have made quite enough of them for her already.

Fifty bucks says that she forgets about all of this and in two years, sends me the exact same sob story essay conveniently bypassing all of this information she's been told twice already about the one hoop she has to jump through to qualify.

And then right before I left work, I got eviscerated in an e-mail by another girl screaming "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!" I looked and guess what? She hasn't fulfilled requirements from three years ago! Which the other office told her to contact them about! And then she didn't! I forwarded her on to the other office to deal with.

Seriously, folks, YOU HAVE TO DO SOME WORK HERE TO HELP YOURSELF. We can only do so much for you and "wave that magic wand and you get what you want!" isn't gonna fly.

I also had another person want me to write a letter to her supposed future organization about her documentation, which she will not have done for another six months at least. She is supposed to have had it done by now to have satisfied their requirements. I don't get a choice about stupid shit like this, so I wrote a letter saying that she HASN'T DONE IT but is planning to do so in six months, we can't verify anything until she's fulfilled things then, assuming that she does, which we don't know yet.

In my field, I can say from experience that if you haven't fulfilled this qualification, you should not be permitted to join that organization. This has come up with others trying this shit before.

I then heard back from the organization essentially saying, "Thanks, we consider this letter proof of her fulfilling the requirements!" And then I was seething red and writing the polite equivalent of NO NO NO I DID NOT CERTIFY THAT AT BLOODY ALL. SHE HAS BLOODY WELL NOT DONE IT. THIS ISN'T EVEN PROOF THAT SHE WILL YET.
And of COURSE all of this involves the magic word "international," which...yeah.

So yeah, I hate people! Stop shooting yourselves in the foot and then acting like I did it!

In other news, the new guy compared me to Penelope Garcia, which is adorable and accurate except for the tech hacking knowledge. "You have a big personality." Just wait until spring when I break out the dresses :)

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