And the buck doesn’t go anywhere (Patreon)

I have no idea what it says about my company, I doubt it’s good, whatever it is, but there is an outright fear of moving a question up the chain of command. Let me give what just happened as an example.

The largest company when it comes to weighing a truck is Cat Scale. Basically, they are everywhere, and they are reliable, and I just found out they have an app that means I can get my weights and pay from my phone while I’m on the scale. It’s a big time saver. As I set it up I saw that one of the option we can use to pay is EFS, which is a fuel card, there’s about half a dozen major options when it comes to them, and it’s the one I used. I went with my credit card since I didn’t know what kind of hoops I’d have to jump through to set up the EFS card and I was in a hurry.

Afterward I emailed the company, I emails payroll, because it’s the only address I have where I thought I’d get an answer. They replied giving a name and number to call. I did. After explaining what the app was, she’d never heard of it, and explaining that I wasn’t trying to force anyone’s hand, and just wanted to find out if the company allowed us to use the app and if so if we could pay using EFS, she said she didn’t know; which is understandable, since it seems I was the first person to ever bring it up.

I asked her to move the question up the chain so we could either find out, or the company could take a stand on the app.

And man did that turn out to be an impossible request.

I mean, she was more than willing to transfer me to someone in IT so they could see if they could arrange the card so it would work. (that’s without her knowing if the company would even allow it) but for her to ask her manager? Oh no, she wouldn’t do that. She didn’t outright say it, but when I pointed out I’m just a driver and I don’t have much in the way of authority to speak to a higher up, she just went of and offered to transfer me to the IT guy saying that he sat right next to someone who’d know that kind of stuff.

Since I wanted an answer, I let her transfer me, and I explained to him about the app. It went faster since with him being in IT he at least knew what an app was. Not that it helped much. He didn’t know, but was immediately willing to look into seeing if he could set up the card anyway.

I had to insist for him to move the question up the chain before he’d even consider it. He finally did, or at least told me he would, with a ‘I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.’

That was 5 hours ago…

I’ll let you know if he ever gets back to me

And 5 days later, I still haven’t heard back. I guess I’ll find out when they come screaming they aren’t paying for that scaling.

And that’s it for now, so I’ll see you on the next one.