Miasmatic Review

Mr. Contagion takes the stand.

I feel like I’ve been put through a washer. Last night I started developing a sore throat, that turned into a full blown head cold by midnight. Between the post nasal drip and the river of snot flowing from my nose, it was a little difficult to get any sleep, which didn’t help the cold any. That meant my mental capacity is not working at fully acceptable levels all day.

Then to make matters worse we had the first day of a three-day Audit at work. Not an internal audit, but an external audit. An outside company came to check our policies and procedures as well to make sure we are in compliance with State and Federal law. Guess who has to go before the audit review board this afternoon? That’s right, Mr. Groggy head. Why me? Well to be honest, I do most of the inventory tracking, I almost always wear a shirt and tie to work even though I don’t have to, and I’ve had experience going through these before.

I knew this was coming and that I was going to have to give testimony, but I didn’t realize what it was going to be like. I spent an hour and a half being grilled by a panel of four over where we get our information, how we come up with our figures, and how we confirm that the information is accurate. Since two of the panel have never worked in my industry, it was really difficult to try to explain things to them.

About half way through, I started developing a headache. That made things even more difficult. Then they start questions where I came up with these procedures and policies. Folks, I would like to say that my mouth filter kicked in and that the last year of working hard to be a better corporate citizen paid off…

…but it didn’t. I spouted off, “I didn’t. Someone else came up with them, I was just taught how to find the data using these methods and have been doing it since. If you really want to know why things are done this way, I suggest you come back three months ago and ask the guy whom I took over doing these reports for.”

Yea, probably not the best answer. An hour and a half later I’m finally released from my tribunal. I feel like I was raked over hot coals. At one point I had to lead the panel on a field trip to my desk to give them a demonstration of the reporting system and basic math. No I’m not joking. I couldn’t get them to grasp the concept that Beginning inventory + Receipts – Ending Inventory = Releases. Yes it was really that simple.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go mix some Jack-quil D to take care of this head cold… and to forget.

Because I get to do it again tomorrow… only over a different procedure.