Imagine working for a company where you have to know a lot of specific details in order to keep things running smoothly. You’re so good at your job that you make it look easy.

That’s what happens in this story, but the employee is so good at his job that his employer doesn’t understand how hard it actually is.

Sometimes your employer may not value you for your skills but don’t worry because this guy’s story will show you how karma is for everyone!

Check out how this law firm lost nearly $125k!

I was taking too many liberties…

I’m a bookkeeper working for a law firm, specializing in receivables and trust accounting (keeping track of what money in the trust account belongs to whom, and what we can do with it).

We also work for a lot of insurance companies on their specialty lines, for example, if a bank makes an insurance claim because it discovered one of its clients was running a ponzi scheme through their accounts, but insurance refuses to pay out because bank employees were involved, which is excluded by the policy, and the bank sues over this, we would represent the insurance company.

He explains how his job works…

Insurance companies have lots of rules for how you bill them, words you can and cannot use, activities you can and cannot bill, etc. and it’s part of my job to know these guidelines and make sure our bills are compliant with them.

Unfortunately, many of these insurance companies use a third party administrator (TPA) to review their bills, and adjust them if not in compliance with the guidelines, and they’re often wrong.

This leads to appeals, which have their own requirements, that I also must know.

This is where it gets tricky…

The result of all of this is that in order to get these bills done properly, and collect as much as possible on them, it takes a lot of communication with our vendors, and lawyers, and the claims counsel at the insurer.

For most of my time at this firm, I have simply reached out as needed to anyone I need to clear up billing issues, and keep the issues requiring a lawyer’s attention to a minimum.

Additionally, nearly all of the claims counsel have told me to reach out to them as needed for billing issues.

The lawyers’ value is in providing advice to our clients, not in billing minutiae that I am perfectly capable of dealing with, and my job is to support them by dealing with the minutiae.

UH OH…

Or so I thought…

It turns out a bunch of lawyers were unhappy with me reaching out to claims counsel whenever I needed to, and not making the request to the lawyer to reach out to claims counsel for whatever I needed.

Okay, fine. It’s not like I don’t have other work to keep me busy for the rest of time, you want to deal with this stuff, you go ahead.

Needless to say, the lawyers were (still are) completely oblivious to the amount of work my job entails (I guess that’s my fault for doing a good job all these people years).

So far we’ve missed several appeal deadlines, resulting in about $25,000 in foregone revenue.

He knows his work is crucial!

There’s a method for most insurers for appeals after the fact, but it doesn’t really work for, “we didn’t email you before the deadline, would you please approve it now anyway?”

The managing partner asked me if we could do an appeal after the fact, he’s spent a week working out how to say, “yeah, it’s our fault, but would you please still fix it for us?”

There’s another $25k in appeals due on Monday which we need claims counsel to approve, so the TPAs will process the appeal, and the lawyer who has to get me the approval is away Thursday and Friday.

Here’s the cherry on top!

There’s another probably $50k in appeals on other files which are due by the end of the month. I could fix everything with a couple phone calls, but I’m not allowed to make them.

Claims counsel won’t reach out to me unless they need to (I dropped enough hints that they understand what is happening, and are supporting my malicious compliance), so we’re both watching the clock tick down…

I wish I had $125k to toss away because I didn’t want to let someone make a phone call.

That’s INSANE!

How can a company be okay with losing so much money?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user wants to know the aftermath of the company’s mistake.

This user is very hopeful with this guy’s documentation skills.

This user isn’t sure what type of lawyers this guy is talking about.

This user knows the company is weird for allowing this to happen!

This user knows this guy needs a big raise if he is as talented as he claims.

He really deserves a raise!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.