...If You Let Him

On Wednesday I had a training session to go to at 825. That's what everybody calls the main office building for District of Columbia Public Schools. During the lunch break I decided to accompany a Shaw U graduate to the payroll office to check on her 'stuff.' Basically she did some of her paperwork late and wanted to ensure that everything was on the up and up and that she would be getting paid. She gave the man her social and he printed her a check stub that showed what would be deposited in her account on Friday. Since I was there, I decided to try to get a sneak peak at what would be deposited in my account as well.

When I gave the man my social he said that I wasn't in the system. Thinking it was some mistake or that he had typed the number incorrectly I gave him the number again. Same response. Not in the system. I was floored. Here it is Wednesday and I'm expecting a check on Friday and I'm not in the system.

He instructed me to go to my staffing specialist and let her know. This woman has to be the most aloof person I know. She is just so not on it. When I approached her to tell her about the situation she was not very bothered. She acted as if this sort of thing happened all the time and that she'd get to it when she could. I told her her nonchalance about my business was unacceptable and that she absolutely had to take care of my paperwork today. As a matter of fact I told her within the hour. I had to control my emotions because she kept flipping a piece of paper over as we were talking and staring at it. At one point she wasn't saying anything. It's hard to describe the scene on paper but suffice it to say I was annoyed at her inactivity. Once I told her I wasn't in the system she should have IMMEDIATELY sprang into action to get me in the system to get me paid. Finally she remarked at the end that she 'guessed that she should go and work on this now.' Of course I'm thinking hell yeah itchbay, go handle my shiznit not now but right dang now!!!

When I returned to payroll to let the guy, let's call him Mr. Helpful know what had transpired he gave me some more directives. As he was speaking an e-mail came in from my staffing specialist asking what she needed to do. Mr. Helpful decided that this required a face to face visit to make sure that Ms. A Loof understood what she had to do so that I can get paid. Let's interrupt this story to remind you about what else I had been contending with NCA&TSU. Yeah, if you read that already you understand more about why I would be extremely frustrated at this point. She had to regenerate a document that should have been generated a long time ago. She had sent it up to payroll but they returned it because it was incomplete/incorrect. She didn't realize they had sent it back to her and at the moment didn't know where it was. So like I said she had to reproduce the document. Mr. Helpful informed me that it would only take five minutes to do it and that he had spoken with the head of HR to let him know what was going on so that she would be forced to handle my business. As he and I spoke in the hallways for 21 minutes I remarked to him that she should have been able to produce four 4.25 documents in that amount of time. We chuckled about it but I was serious. I need people to have a sense of urgency especially about your money when they have dropped the ball.

Update to the A&T situation: I received a call on Wednesday and another one on Thursday from two different individuals that informed me that the check was cut on Thursday and would be mailed on Friday. We'll see. Is it just me, but if it was cut on Thursday, why wasn't it mailed on Thursday?

Also while I was down at payroll I had Mr. Helpful find out if they had record of a time sheet having been submitted for me. Interestingly enough they had a time sheet. In my twisted logic I would think that if you have people on the time sheet but have no record of them existing that you'd investigate why. Maybe it's just me. I did learn that payroll is short four people so they just don't have time to track down a bunch of stuff like that right now. That's the same reason they sent my paperwork back down to my staffing specialist on August 6. They don't have time to correct people's mistakes and run stuff down because they are so short staffed.

I spoke with the Business Manager at my school (we called them Treasurers in NC and GA). She didn't think it was realistic for me to expect a paycheck on September 12th. I told her that Mr. Helpful who she knows very well and who her office mate (not really her office mate but he's in there all the time) knows very well assured me that I'd get paid on Friday because he was going to personally walk the paperwork through the process. All day Friday it was touch and go. I tried not to think about it so that I could get my work done. I managed to do that until the BM called me down to her office to find out if I had gone to pick up my check because her contact down there told her that she didn't see the check. I told her no. The BM let me know that there were so more checks coming in after 3:00pm. It was at that point that I said I wasn't going to give up hope. I finally went down to her office after school so that she could call and check. Bless goodness my check was there. (That's something my grandma used to say. I gotta find some pics of her that I can post.) Look at God! People don't believe it but He'll do it if you let him. That's on of my favorite churchy sayings.

I forgot to mention that I shared with a friend about the A&T thing and now the DCPS thing and she remarked that I needed to pray about why God was allowing my finances to be attacked. I side eyed her (ala Opinionated Diva) and told her that it wasn't that deep and that people just needed to do their jobs. Don't you hate it when people wanna make stuff deep that really isn't?