For some reason he always came to me for help. He, well, let's call him “Kim.” Kim was from our headquarters in California, and because of his screw-ups, which by the way was discovered and brought up to the table by me, my manager demanded him to fly over to our office in Massachusetts, so we could monitor his work close-by.
Oh, I forgot to mention. This happened a while back and we weren't with this company anymore, so it should be okay to tell you folks this.
I was at the helm of our project at the time, so it made sense that he came to me for any work related issues. BUT, he also came to me for his laptop problems. For this, I could only smile and said, “There's nothing I can do.” (Are you expecting me to fix it for you?! You can call our company's IT department for that!)
One day, when it was close to his time of returning to the west coast, he came to me with a frowned face and complained that our secretary wouldn't help him book an airline ticket. “What?!” Yup, that's my reaction when I heard that. I knew our secretary could be a bit ..., but refusing to book a ticket? THAT I'd never heard of. It's true that Kim wasn't from our office, but his presence was requested by us after all.
Then came the bombshell. This Kim... He said he wanted to “save money” for our company so he booked his airline and hotel from Priceline. (“What??!!!!” Yet another stupid thing I'd never heard of. C'mon! It's not like our company can't afford it. Jeez...) Yes, it was very cheap, but he wasn't allowed to change the itinerary or request a refund, so when my manager asked him to stay another week, he was screwed. AND because his next trip wasn't planned two weeks in advance, he, or us, had to pay premium for the airline ticket, which was over two thousand dollars. No wonder our secretary refused his request.
I was upset and brought this issue to my manager (well, he was my hiring manager, but I wasn't on his team any longer. He was the one asking Kim to fly over). His reaction was pretty much like mine, and said, “That's not right. We asked Kim to come here. I'lll ask Beth to charge the ticket to our account,” and so he walked out of his cubicle and went to our secretary's.
Kim said, “I just wanted to save money for our company.” Yeah, but you ended up spending more. WAY~~~ more.
