If you run a company where a lot of people work in other countries and submit expense reports for reimbursement, it makes sense that you’d want to make sure those expenses are legitimate.

If you don’t speak the language, hiring a translator might be the best way to do that.

In today’s story, a translator is hired for this exact reason, but she seems to think her job is to do more than simply translate the expenses.

This really bothers one of the employees, and he finds a clever way to get her fired.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

How I got our translator fired

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.

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 receipts to make sure we weren’t sneaking in extras.

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 translator was a Karen.

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.

Karen seemed to think she had more power than she really did.

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

She warned Karen that she might lose her job.

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.

She talked to the VP.

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”

She turned the conversation to Karen.

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

I nod my head and I go “how much fraudulent expenses has she caught?”

He asked the VP if Karen caught any fraudulent expenses.

It’s 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”

Now he’s inquiring about Karen’s salary.

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.

She drives home his point…

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

The VP is losing his battle to defend Karen.

“And imagine the cost savings, we would probably save over $40,000 a year that’s a good chunk of change isn’t it?”

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?”

Karen lost her job.

FYI I knew that a major % of a VP comp package with the company had to do with the company’s 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.

FYI Karen wasn’t her real name obviously.

It sounds like Karen’s job was unnecessary to begin with.

She deserved to go not just for her attitude but because she wasn’t really useful.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader loved the way he framed firing Karen to the VP.

Karen’s job was unnecessary.

Here’s another story about a translator who acts like she’s more than a translator.

An app is all you need to translate anything.

Karen’s job was really easy.

If she had just done her job and nothing more, she’d still work there.

A tough lesson to learn, I suppose.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.