Whiners

I forgot to mention yesterday the whiner cry-baby I had to deal with on the phone. Because of the nature of the film industry, a lot of the crew members only work for a few days on a particular show. Since checks come out a week later on Thursday a lot of them get put in the mail. And quite a few of them go missing. This happened to a man I'll call "Ron" who was in our set decorating department.

"Ron" wasn't with us anymore when his check was cut (11/3) and it was returned to me with the instructions to mail it. I did. I mailed a lot of checks that week (I keep a list). On 11/8, the Set Dec Coord called and said he hadn't received it yet. I asked her to check with him if I should put a stop payment on it, with the caveat that it took a minimum of 72 hours to reissue a check (it's the bank's rule, nothing anybody can do to get around it). His response was to give it one more day, just in case... So the following day he called back - hadn't gotten it yet - so I called the payroll company and stopped it. That was 11/9.

Yesterday he calls all huffy and says he has to have that check TODAY. I told him I hadn't gotten anything from the payroll company, but I would call them and let him know if they had an eta. Well, they didn't. They were still waiting on the bank's ok. I called him back and we went round and round about the bank and the 72 hours and he tried to lay into me about the check being 3 weeks late already and that's where I shut him down. I didn't call him a liar, but I said "No, that check was cut on time and put in the mail. It's nobody's fault that it got lost in the mail, but it certainly wasn't late." He wasn't particularly pleasant to me and when he asked for my paymaster's name at the payroll company, I told him I would not give it to him if he was going to call and yell at her or in any other way be abusive. She's good at her job and doesn't deserve that treatment. I think calling him on his attitude calmed him down because he actually said he would not be abusive. I gave him the info and after he hung up, I called her myself to warn her. I still don't know how that turned out... we'll see.

This is why a lot of people don't like payroll. People love you on payday and think you're trying to ruin their lives if something goes wrong. I have had people yell at me on the phone and accuse me of ruining their Christmas/holidays/etc, as well as causing someone to lose their home/car/etc - all because of a check that got lost in the mail. Whatever. I always want to say "don't live paycheck to paycheck and you won't have these problems" but that probably wouldn't go over so well.