No, You Won't Believe Me, but I'm Telling the Truth.

 For just over a week I've been working for a man who has been in and out of self-inflicted mental instability to the point that he has taken to blaming everything and everyone other than himself for literally everything that has ever happened to him. I've known the man for just about 10 days and suddenly I'm the Devil, yeah, no. I won't be working there very long, I can tell you that. I just passed the Adjuster's exam (again, I had let it lapse in 2015) and I will be well on my way to another position very soon. I thought maybe I'd hover over the events of the past few days to see if I could glean a bit of information to put into my murder book, but the truth is, no one in their right mind would believe what's been going on in that office.

    I walked into a hornet's nest! That's all I can say about it. The man is so far lost in the 1980s and '90s when it comes to every aspect of his business, you'd think he would be older and one of those stuck-in-time warp types. He's about 48 I think, but he is an only child of predominantly WASP types; White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. He's spoiled beyond belief and this is the only job he's ever had. He didn't have it until his father gave it up a few years ago and told him he could either run it or run it into the ground, but that he, the father, was retiring. I won't give you his real name, I'll call the man Dick since that fits him better than his actual name.

    Dick inherited the business from his retiring father. When he hired the father back a few years ago, the father decided to run the business into the ground and since Dick didn't know his head from a hole in the ground, he didn't know how or what to do. His personal assistant, the woman who is now retiring and they had hoped I would replace (think again), had to pull the business back into the black ink rather than the sea of red it was swimming in and circling! She and the project manager who Dick has cheated and run over a few hundred times on a personal level brought the clientele back, apologized to the ones who were victimized by shotty performance and that's where we are today. 

    It's been about four years since they've been able to settle the issues, but there goes Dick, creating havoc again, just as he did before, and the woman is FED UP. We'll call her Angel since that name suits her better than her given name. Angel was thrilled that I was hired because training me wouldn't be that difficult, and she could wash her hands of the mess...or so she thought. I sat down at the desk on the first day and when the computer took 11 minutes to come on and begin to show signs of life I checked it only to find that Dick was running Windows 8 on his old and decrypted computer! The monitor has a crack in it. They still write checks using ballpoint pen and paper tear-out checks. They mail these checks off in the regular post, and they expect people to wait five business days to be paid. No one likes to do that in 2022. NO ONE LIKES TO DO THAT. I get calls all week asking if I can just send the money electronically!  The answer is "I wish".

    Dick should have done his due diligence. My resume clearly says I've been an insurance investigator for years. I started with his files and moved over to Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable to see what could be done about moving them into a digital format. That's when I found the first few, shall we say, discrepancies.  I think the actual term is "embezzlement".  I'm fairly certain that if I were questioned on the stand I would have to use the word "embezzlement" rather than "misunderstanding" or "oversight".  I know what I found was intentional. I know what I found was fraudulent.  I addressed it with Angel. Her thing was and is, "Not my circus, not my monkies" and I get that, because no one wants to lose their job!  She stands her ground and states "Don't ask, don't tell, but if I'm asked directly, I won't lie for anyone".  That's right! NO WAY! 

    It wasn't long before contractors and supply companies began calling to say the checks we wrote and sent had to be deposited and cleared after several business days because they were handwritten. I get that! I was absolutely shocked when I saw it. The man has Folgers coffee, need I say more? The wallpaper, the decorations, the chairs in the front office, the desks, the shelves, all of the equipment except the relatively new printers, are stuck in the generation of my children who are now really old people.  Dick wanted me to drive to the court clerk's office three counties over to file a pre-lien on a client's home. In order to do that, I would have to close the office down, get in my car, use my gas, drive an hour down there and file the paper, get back into my car, drive back, and fight traffic.  It's 60 miles away and at .69 cents a mile, he's looking at paying me $82.80 just to file it, let alone the cost of filing the lien itself.  This man is an idiot.  I signed him up for an online simplified service for $150.00 a year. It charges $5.25 per file to be filed. 

    He wanted me to take the checks to the bank to be deposited. I can do that, or I can take photos of them and upload them onto the bank's automated site where you actually do digital transfers in 2022.  Since Dick doesn't trust the internet, believing that the Devil himself created it, (but you know he looks at things posted on the internet when he thinks no one is looking, and he doesn't know how to clear his history) he didn't want to do that. I told him I'd love to help, but I get off at 5:00 p.m. and I'm not stopping by the bank. I'll take off early and do it, he can have the receipt the next day. I'm not driving to the bank, sitting in line at the window, then driving back to the office. This is 2022; he needs to get with the program. Since he didn't clear his history I took a snippet of it and sent it to myself so I can show his wife later if I need to. I know, I'm mean.

    Today Dick was supposed to meet Angel and I at 9:30 a.m. SHARP so we could go over a few things since Angel was up from Texas to train me, and he needed to get her take on some things.  When 10:00 a.m. rolled around and Mr. Dick Sharp was not in the office, Angel and I started laughing because just yesterday he was harping at us about being late when we aren't ever late. We are both the type to say if we're late we're dead! He's late. He's never on time. He didn't show up at 10:00 either, he called to say he was sick AGAIN, the man is chronic.  When Angel handed me her phone to take a bathroom break she told me to just say "uh-huh" or "yeah" a couple of times and he'd never know it wasn't her.  I guess he figured it out and said "Oh, I want to talk to Angel, not you."  Wow, really! I'm the one replacing her. What are you talking about that I can't know? 

    After saying what he said, he hung up abruptly and sent Angel a text message on the same damn phone I was holding in my hand!  The text reads "Whenever you're ready please call me back where Jude cannot hear me. Or you. I've got some things I want to talk to you about I don't want anyone else to hear, not her."  Dick move.  I took a photo of the text using my personal phone and I sent it to the staffing agency that placed me in the position. I also sent it to my two best friends because I needed a good chuckle and thought they may be into laughing with me. Who does that? Who texts someone if he KNOWS I have the phone in my hands? Geez, Louise, this man is stupid.  When Angel came back from the restroom down the hall I showed her the phone photo I took of her phone.  She was humiliated. He has stepped over so many lines. I didn't know the half of it. She filled me in over the next couple of hours.

    She called Dick back and pretended to be in his office so I could hear what he had to say. Not joking, the man blamed me for things that took place years ago. Somehow I had the power and authority to morph into a being from his past, and I took over the Accounts Payable and I made it go negative. That's the only thing he could come up with since he had been skimming and the skimming bit his backside to the point of going negative.  Angel and I had deposited over $43,000 into that account last week -- it was GONE.  Suppliers won't be paid. Contractors won't be paid. The checks they hold will bounce. Angel and the project manager will not be paid. I will be paid since I'm working through an agency, and the agency pays me, then waits for Dick's check to come in through an invoice. They won't be paid. When that happens they'll pull me from the assignment and Angel won't help him train anyone to replace me; not if she's got a brain in her head and she does.

    When he began saying these things and I watched Angel wrap her head in her hands, I felt so sorry for her and for our really sweet and honest project manager who busts his butt 24/7 to help this man.  Since I'm THAT WAY, I decided to call the project manager to let him know, but he called me first. I explained to him what I knew and what I could hear as Angel continued to talk with Dick. There was  silence of course, as the PM realized not only would he not be able to make his personal bills this week or possibly longer, he had just given the OK to the new project and the contractors were in the middle of it. The supplies had been purchased, they had been delivered, they had been opened, and were being installed. What to do? If he pulls them off of the job the homeowner becomes a victim, their insurance company becomes a creditor, and it just snowballs from there - - and it did.

    Dick, for his part, was no longer blaming me, Angel had managed to remind him that I was just another human who was doing her job and doing it exceptionally. Angel begged Dick to go to the doctor, believing that his manic behavior may be helped with a diagnosis and corrective medication. Because Dick is THAT guy, the one who believes all doctors are paid to kill people, and believes the government has no right(s) to tax us, he refuses to see anyone for assistance except maybe his idiot father who has raised him to believe that the less people know the better.  We know alright! We have the AP documents scanned now, and they're copied. I won't even wave when I leave tomorrow. I'll just hug Angel and walk away from it. She's the one I feel sorry for; he owes her two weeks of pay, two weeks of vacation, and a relocation fee of just under $3500.  Yeah, good luck!

    I haven't mentioned that Dick is married to a woman who hasn't told her father that she's married and it's been just under three years.  Instead, Dick is going to ask for the woman's hand in marriage when he feels better, but he is not sure when that will be, as he's been sick for about that long. He got Covid before it had a name, and he's never actually recovered from it. He's been able to use it as an excuse not to come into the office, not to have meetings, not to face conflict with customers, and certainly not to deal with anyone saying he owes them money. He does feel better from time to time, and he makes it out of the house to the Rotary Club meetings, the Pacesetters, and a men's prayer group every week. He gets really sick just after these times, it's uncanny how that happens over and over again. He'll call Angel with his fake hacking and coughing and she'll put the phone down, keep working, and occasionally say "uh huh" and "right" at the best times.  She can't be bothered. Who needs this in their lives? She moved.  She got out of Dodge, but he still calls her. I say she should change her phone number and walk away! I will.  I won't even remember his name by this time next week - - I might giggle when I drive past the building.

    One last thing before I go eat something and try to put all this behind me. The sweet and honest project manager called me to ask me to pray for him and his family. I told him I would do more than just pray. I would help him (and Angel) find work that would be suitable and they wouldn't have to put up with the shenanigans of this idiot for even another week.  Apparently, this is NORMAL for this man. There is NOTHING normal about his ways, means, and methods. He's a crook, he's a common thief and needs to be shut down.  I think I can make that happen.  The PM thanked me.  I have him set up with an interview tomorrow. It literally took 10 minutes and two phone calls to find him a new job. To think he's been putting up with this crap for so many years and at such a personal level. Breaks my heart to think there are DICKS out there, but there are.  We live, we learn, then we move forward.  Dick may be moving in circles soon in an 8x8 block cell!

Photo Credit: WhatYourBossThinks.com