Tuesday, February 5, 2008

The Bursting of My Bubble

As you know, there was a birthday party to attend over the weekend. Everyone was there and I started telling my mom how my boss had given me some new responsibilities. One of them is monitoring all of our clients who are on credit holds. This means they have to pay in advance before we will ship products to them. The other new thing I am doing is handling accounts receivable calls. When customers are late paying their bills, I call and remind them, then offer to fax or email any invoices they may not have on file.

I was am having so much fun having some new things to do. Anyway, I was explaining these new responsibilities to my family, and feeling pretty good about myself. Until Sissy interjected with her take on the situation. It went something like this:

"OH MY GOD MOM, YOU'RE A BILL COLLECTOR! YOU TRAITOR!"

Sissy remembers the hard times when our phone would ring constantly with bill collectors calling our house. I had not quite put that spin on what I am doing. There are a couple of differences between what I do and those hard working individuals that are forced for whatever reason to be bill collectors. The number one difference is that I don't call clients and demand money.

These companies are customers, and it simply would not do for me to tick them off. Bill collectors have to be way more aggressive than I am. It would be ridiculous for them to call up and say, "We would like to know when you are going to pay your light bill, maybe it got lost in the mail. I would be happy to send you another copy". They probably wouldn't make very much progress that way.


The second difference is that I don't call customers fifty times a day. I am not set up on some automated machine that just keeps dialing a number until someone answers.

I could go on and on about the differences between what I am doing and what regular "bill collectors" are doing. However that will not change the fact that for all intents and purposes, I am a bill collector. (Shudder)

In other news.........

Procrastination is once again the name of the game as my last semester in college is in full swing. See, that's the thing about me, I confess my faults willingly. It is very liberating. I take no greater pleasure than waiting until the absolute LAST minute to complete an assignment. See, I work better under pressure. Here's my plan: Sit around stressing out about an upcoming assignment. Know that I need to get it done, yet avoid getting started on it. Do other things besides the assignment I need to be working on, such as clean, do dishes, or cook. Then stress some more about said upcoming assignment. Finally, sit down and do the assignment and feel relieved. Then start the cycle all over again. Yep, I like to live dangerously. I'm crazy like that.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're not a bill collector, you're a friendly reminder!

HW said...

Wasn't Matthew, in the Bible, a Tax Collector?

And he has like, a whole New Testament book named after him, so there must be some good in collectors.

The world needs bill collectors too.

Susiewearsthepants said...

I know but.....I feel like such a hypocrite!