BUSTED !

There's this guy here at the office who was supposed to be a deity when it came to tax work; before he started working here, I saw him occasionally when he came in to do consulting work; he always appeared to be pretty competent.

Then he joined the firm, and I got to work with him on a daily basis.

Slowly, that image of superior intellect and near invincible work habits began to deteriorate. Lately, it seems, he would frequently come rushing back and retrieve work from the outgoing mail bin at the last second, making excuses about how he overlooked several million dollars here or there because of something the client had failed to divulge. Of course, we grunts in the trenches nodded in understanding, but we always harbored suspicions that he was simply screwing up and blaming the clients.

This last Wednesday he gave me a return to send to the client for signatures. I performed all the normal duties and sent the email with attachments to the client. (Technically I'm the network admin, but I help out with some clerical duties when I can.) This morning he came to me and asked if I had sent the email.

"Yep," I answered. "Went out about 15 minutes after you gave it to me."
"Oh, " he said. "We'll need to resend it - this morning the client changed a bunch of numbers."
"OK," I said. "Let me know when it's ready."

One of the other grunts IM'd me.

"Funny how it's always his clients that change the numbers," he messaged.

"Bull," I IM'd him back. "He missed something and now he's trying to cover his ass."
Later, I received the corrected file and sent a second email to the client, mumbling under my breath about how incompetence can be so fiscally rewarding.

Hours later I get an email from the client, asking why I've sent the documents again and asking what to do.

BUSTED !

Me and my co-worker had a good laugh over the fact that we were both right on our call. The devil in me wanted to write back to the client and say something about how he is receiving this email as a result of the changes he provided this morning, but I decided to be nice.

Don't ya just love it when you make a situational assessment and learn you nailed it right on the head?

I give myself a virtual high five... I rock...