Team lunch and expense predicament

Our team get-together was a lot of fun. We spent over three hours eating, drink, and chatting on a hot, humid day on a shaded patio. Eventually, the humidity dropped a bit and it was more comfortable.

The good news is that my corporate credit card worked to pay for our outing, which was nearly $400 

CAD. The downside is that my manager shouldn't have asked me to expense this meal. There's a corporate rule that if the manager is a part of a group activity that needs to be expensed, he needs to file it, and not someone on his team whom he manages.

It opens quite the can of worms to get my money. He doesn't like using e-transfer. I don't want to meet him somewhere to get the funds in cash, hit a bank machine, and deposit them. Ugh.

Anyway, we'll see how diligent the expense folks are in figuring out my expense report.

Fixing things to make things right and having them run smoothly

It would be nice if things ran smoothly all the time. Sometimes, they do. Other times, they go horribly wrong.

As you know, I changed cell phone providers in late October. Last month, I noticed a number of issues with my first bill:

• I had asked for unlimited Canada-wide long-distance calling. It wasn't applied to my plan. As a result, my talking to my guy over the phone for a month racked up $31 worth of charges.
• I was promised a $10 per month discount on my monthly rate. It never got applied either.

So, I called the company on a Sunday. I spoke to a guy who was helpful on the whole. 

He was great to reimburse me for the long-distance charges and added unlimited Canada-wide calling to my plan. My guy and I are roughly a two-hour drive away from each other, so it makes sense to have unlimited calling since we chat a lot.

I was advised that the second point could be fixed if I switch from being a business customer to a residential one. I have a corporate discount, which is why I ended up being a business customer. Still, it's ridiculous to transfer my account over simply for a discount.

I told my guy about the whole situation. He was annoyed. He has also dealt with similar issues when he changed to his corporate account. He's used to it, unfortunately.

Last week, I contacted my sales rep. She advised that she was driving. She asked that I call her. I was about to have lunch, so I didn't.

I remembered to call her today. She checked. Sure enough, the discount was not applied. She is having that slapped on. I will also get reimbursed for the previous month.

And then, there's work.

Whenever we have a software release, our user guides need to be uploaded to a special repository for folks to access at any time. In the past, three of us would upload each guide one at a time. The work was not difficult. Rather, it was extremely time-consuming.

This past weekend, I tried a new tool that allows you to upload all guides at once. The catch is to load the details correctly. You then press a few buttons and everything runs smoothly.

I triple-checked my information. On Monday, I uploaded all 117 user guides. No errors! 

My colleague then kicked off another build to order the documents in our repository. In less than a day, we were done.

I told him that it was the most stress-free upload that we have ever worked on. He commended the fact that I was meticulous with all details, which helped. Everything ran perfectly.

It was a good day. Let's hope for more of them.