Surprise is a good thing.
“Why,” you ask? As if I need to tell you. Puh-leeze.
It provides much-needed amusement! Duh!
"Do tell!' you say.
Why, certainly. Thanks for asking.
A supervisor at one of my clients emailed my subordinate stating that one of our contractors was complaining he had yet to get paid after four weeks of work. My subordinate reached out to me for advice on the 'tone' to use in his response email. I browsed through this contractor's file to see what was going on, advised my subordinate, and a response was sent.
What was going on? You ask with such breathless anticipation. I can’t wait to tell you:
Had this contractor gotten paid for the past four weeks? Technically, yes. A check was cut weekly, dropped in the mail per the contractor's preferred method to receive payment, and bounced back to our office as Undeliverable. Queue up a bunch of notes in his file – growing more frantic and annoyed every time a check bounced, as you may expect – confirming the address on file exactly matched the address provided by the contractor.
Being the dedicated worker I am, I typed the contractor's address into Google Maps.
Well, would you look at that? Google Maps told me the address that I typed in isn't an address...It's most of an address.
The address in the file was (basically) 555 Parkway St., Town, State, 55555. The address that Google Maps found was 555 Parkway St. N., Town, State 55555.
A tiny yet significant difference. I feel pretty sure I learned about those cardinal directions in third grade because I thought that maybe my address had a NW in it for a brief moment.
(I got it sorted well before fourth grade, though. This guy did not.)
My co-worker asked if he could hand-deliver the returned checks to the contractor at the client, to which I replied was fine. I also told him to bring along his laptop, pull up the contractor's address on Google Maps in front of the guy, and sort out the damn issue in writing.
I also told him to get this guy to enroll in direct deposit so we could be done with this ‘mail-it-like-it-is-1990’ situation.
Great. I'm thinking ‘problem solved’ and move on with my day. Hooray for subordinates.
At the end of the day, my subordinate calls me in utter exasperation. The contractor was adamant that the address on file is correct, and whatever Google Maps is pulling up is not correct. He doubled down and did not grant permission to change the address on file. That flag was well and truly planted, and he was going to die on the Hill of Trivialities. Nothing my co-worker said was going to get him to change his mind.
Well, fine. Next week he can come and pick up his check at our office. No skin off my nose.
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