Signed Confession

I got a message this week from the University Travel Office informing me that I had an outstanding charge on my university corporate credit card that I use for traveling. A couple days earlier I had discovered that my hotel had erroneously billed my card for room service that I did not order. I emailed them about it, and they immediately credited my card for the complete amount. When I went online, the credit for the charge was listed right below the erroneous charge. I decided to call the Travel Office, thinking that I would tell them about the charge and its credit being listed right next to each other, and we would all have a good laugh about how computer systems are so dumb because they don’t catch easy stuff like that. And then they would fix it.

Hah! No sooner had I described the problem then the student employee started to describe in detail the multiple forms and documents I would have to fill out and submit to get my card cleared. My blood started rushing to my head, and at about the three minute mark, I couldn’t take it anymore. There was no way that I was going to spend an hour filling out forms to appease bureaucratic policy. Ten years ago I would have, but at my age, life is too short to waste on idiocy not of my own making. So when she took her next breath, I cut in and told her that this was not my problem, that it was an accounting problem, and that I was not going to fill in the forms. She took me at my word, probably because we academicians have a bad reputation of being unreasonable. She politely asked me to hold while she talked to her supervisor.

I’m sure her and her supervisor had a wonderful chat about my ancestry and profession, after which she came back on the phone and offered to help create the forms while I waited. I conceded. After about 10 minutes, we had things wrapped up except for the final form. To meet the accounting policies, she explained, I would have to write a memo explaining why the receipt was missing. Once again, the blood rushed to my head. “The receipt’s not missing, because there was never a receipt to begin with!” I nearly shout into the phone. Why was I being forced to admit I had a missing receipt when the receipt that was never issued? It was a freakin’ Spanish Inquisition. She was insistent, however, even after she once again pleasantly put me on hold to discuss my ancestry and profession with her supervisor. I realized that if I didn’t do it, someone else in my department would probably be made to do it. So I agreed. She reminded me that I needed to sign it. Like a good child, I promised I would. Before she hung up, she asked me if there was anything else she could help me with. I bit my tongue instead of saying that I didn’t have time for any more of her help.

I wrote out the note explaining why there was no receipt, and resisted the temptation to write a paragraph about the asinine system they were using, reasoning that no one would read that part of the note anyway. All they wanted was a confession, and I delivered. After I signed it, I took it to the student secretary to get it scanned. She informed me that we could email the scanned image directly to the travel office if I knew what the email address was. I told her it is was satan@university.edu. “Wait! Don’t do that!” I continued, “That would probably end up in the traffic office.” She laughed and suggested lucifer666@university.edu. We came up with a couple of other equally appropriate addresses, then finally entered the correct email address and sent it off. I glanced at the clock and congratulated myself that it had only taken 45 minutes to resolve such a difficult accounting issue.