Paying the Bills

Occasionally, I use my cell phone for work related calls. In the past, you log into the reimbursement system, and fill out a form that takes about 3 minutes. If the cost is under 25.00 you do not need to provide a receipt. A week later the money is deposited in your account.

Until now.

Last week, the bank implemented a new system. You now have to itemize each call that you make, no matter if it is personal or work related. You then have to print out the bill and fax, yes fax, it to them. So, I printed put the page that had the work related calls on it circled the calls that were work related and blocked out the remainder of the numbers. I was asking for $7.20 to be reimbursed. Not a huge amount but why should I pay for work related calls. We only get reimbursed .06 a minute.

Three days later I get an email saying that I now need to provide my entire bill. All 18 pages of it. So, once again, I print out all the pages and proceed to highlight the work related calls and black out everything else that is not work related or contains and personal information. I pay for my parent's cell phone on my plan and the bank does not need to know who they are calling.

Yesterday, I get an email from them stating that they need to see the entire bill with the charges that I am seeking reimbursement for highlighted and nothing else blacked out. WTF?!?! I replied to them, copying my useless boss, stating that I considered this an invasion of my privacy. They do not need to know the numbers for the calls that were made or received that I am not seeking reimbursement for. Am I wrong in thinking this??

If I remember I will bring home the bill I faxed them and put it on here. For your amusement.

I just received my bill for October and need to get reimbursed for about 11 bucks. I already dread completing this request. From now on, I will use my home phone and use a calling card.

What scares me is that one of the things that I do is manage pagers for the bank. We have been moving people off of their pagers and over to their cell phones little by little. If we begin to move large amount of people over to their pagers and this is the pain in the ass that it is to get reimbursed, we are going to hear shit about it. We are a few months away from rolling out corporate owned cell phones. The users are personally liable for them but the bank owns them. I can see this being a cluster fuck if they have to go thru all this shit to get paid back for them.

To top it off, when I submitted my expenses for my trip to MN last week, my bosses boss did not approve my expenses promptly enough in the old system. Now I have to figure out how to submit them in the new system considering that I already sent in my receipts. Since they require the only the original receipts, I cannot send them the photocopies, of which I did not make anyway. My credit card bill is due next week and I know that I will not have the money for it back from the bank.

ZOBMONDO!!

Would you rather....

While drunk, go rock climbing

----OR----

learn to surf?

I have to go with surfing. I can swim. Not really good at being Spiderman (or girl)