No one likes it when a fellow employee, who is technically their equal, tries to act like their boss.
It’s the same feeling as when one of your siblings tried to tell you what to do when your parents were out of earshot.
OP worked in a job where submitting receipts for foreign expenses was a regular duty.
I was working a job that had me operating in one our offices overseas. We would have business expenses, and those receipts would be in the language of the country we were in obviously.
Those expenses were for things like printer ink, office equipment, cleaning services, marketing costs, all pretty standard stuff.
One day, the company thought it would be good to have a translator translate those receipts to make sure nothing was being overcharged, etc.
Well around this time we got a new VP over our region who worked out of head office in LA. This VP came up with this brilliant idea to hire a translator to translate all of reciepts to make sure we weren’t sneaking stuff in.
Fair enough, however the issue that arose was that we had to send our expenses to the translator who would translate the receipt then submit for reimbursement. The problem was this translator was a real Karen type.
She would demand better scans of the receipts, often times after we had already thrown it away. She would argue if we really got the best deal on whatever we bought.
The translator took her job a little too seriously, and rubbed OP the wrong way.
I remember in one transaction on about $200 of ink cartridges’ she asked me why I didn’t order online from this common website. To which I said they were out of stock at the time, and we needed the ink so we bought from a local store.
To which she said I was spending too much money
To which I said its none of your concern, your job is to translate the receipt
To which she said if I want her to submit my expenses I need to be nice to her
To which I said she needs to learn her place she’s a translator not a VP that gets to instruct me what to do
After this encounter she started being extra anal with my expenses, so one day I came in the office early to call her and try and work things out.
She basically told me that I screwed up by pissing her off, and she expected my expense reports to be perfect or she wouldn’t submit them unless they were.
I told her if she keeps this up she won’t have a job much longer. She laughed and wished me well and hung up.
So, when he had the opportunity to talk to a higher up about her efficiency, he did it.
A few months later we had our annual meeting in LA and after the meeting we were at a bar and I walked up to our VP and started up a conversation. I steered the conversation to expenses and I asked him how much in monthly expenses did he typically reimburse us for in the country we worked out of. He said about $3,000 to $4,000. I acted surprised and asked “is that all?” he goes “Yea”
To clarify that $3,000 to $4,000 is the typical spend, and he says yea it rarely gets above $4,000.
So I ask him about how Karen our translator is doing, he says she’s doing a good job and I nod my head and I go “how much fraudulent expenses has she caught?”
Its important to note, every employee that was submitting expenses was well paid, they’d be awfully stupid trying to skim some extra dollars via fraudulent expense reports.
He goes “What do you mean?”
I said “Well you hired her to ensure all the expenses you were reimbursing us for are legitimate right? Her job is to translate them for you correct?” he says it is, and I ask “So is it safe to presume you’ve done that to ensure people aren’t submitting BS expenses?” he says “You could say that”
I smile and ask
“So how much in fraudulent expenses has she caught?”
He thinks for a moment and goes “I don’t think she has caught any”
So I ask “And how much do we pay her?”
He says it depends on her work load but between $2,500-$3,00 a month. I smile and ask “Does it make sense to pay someone $3,000 a month to translate $3,000 in receipts?”
“Well she ensures we aren’t getting fraudulent expenses” and I counter “Well you said she hasn’t count any in the last 9 months, and the expenses are always between $3,000-$4,000 so as long as the expenses stay in that range wouldn’t it be safe to assume that the expenses are legitimate? And couldn’t you bring on a translator on a contract basis if they get out of hand?”
He sees my point
“And imagine the cost savings, we would probably save over $40,000 a year that’s a good chunk of change isn’t it?”
Lo and behold, the guy saw his point (in dollar signs).
The VP tries to defend his position “but she does a good job” and I counter “but you could frame this as you’ve saved us $40,000 a year and created a baseline to judge expenses by, cutting costs is always good for the bottom line and the end of the year bonuses isn’t it?”
FYI I knew that a major % of a VP comp package with the company had to do with the companies margin at the end of the year, the bigger the margin, the bigger the bonus.
You can see the twinkle in his eye
We carry on the rest of the night, a few weeks later we get an email from the VP saying that we are submit to all our expenses directly to the admin for reimbursement and that we have let go of Karen.
I bet Reddit is impressed.
They agree that OP took the right road.
Some people just live to make life harder for other people.
There are people out there who know their place.
Everyone agrees she was useless, anyway.
Other people have run into similar trouble, though.
This required some finesse, and OP saw it through.
You’ve got to admire that kind of dedicated rage.
If you liked that story, check out this one about a Costco customer who got their cart stolen… so she hatched a plan to get it back!