bEYoNd sTOoPiD

By Budly

Aside from Melamine's front desk responsibilities at FlemCo, the ear, nose and throat specialists, she was assigned the job of purchasing office supplies.

One day I got a phone call from Melamine's office manager.

"Did you ask Melamine to purchase Norton Utilities for you?"

"No. In fact, that's the first piece of software I uninstall on any computer that I maintain. It's a memory pig. It makes your computer run ssssslow. There are free alternatives like AVG that work just as well, if not better. It misses viruses. It's a pain in the butt to uninstall, and because it arrives on your new computer as part of a marketing deal, it preys on the unknowing masses."

"You sound rather opinionated on the matter."

"That's nothing. You should hear what I've got to say about acorn squash."

"Another time maybe. So just to be sure, you didn't ask Melamine to buy Norton Utilities?"

"Nope. And if she had, you would have seen written documentation, per The Doc's request."

"That's what The Doc told me you'd say."

"Great minds think alike."

A few days later, I was asked to stop by the office to get a new key (maintenance and upgrade tech work tries to get done during office down time) and lock out the Melamine "user" on the computer network - which can be done in less than 5 minutes on a well built Windows network by changing the user's password in Active Directory on the domain server.

Now comes the point at which you cannot make this stuff up:

Apparently Melamine's marriage was failing. So to try and keep her husband - the charming and socially graceful Slick - Melamine had bought him some "presents" courtesy of the company's Staples charge account - $1700.00 worth of "presents" to be exact. Then as part of her regular job responsibilities, Melamine would open the mail and stash the Staples statement until the bookkeeper visited. Then she'd stuff the statement into the middle of the "to be paid" pile.

That was easy.

However in any well run business with delegated tasks, there are always checks and balances. In Melamine's office, there was the bookkeeper's list of who got paid compared to the office manager's empty supply closet. In other words, how do we spend $1700.00 on office supplies and not have any replacement ink cartridges?

This question resulted in the office manager getting copies of the Staples invoices - which are online - and doing some "homework".

That was easy.

So talk about having the penultimate bad day. . .

. . . starting with a phone call from the landlord asking Melamine when she was moving out.

"Huh?"

"Slick said he was moving out at the end of the month. Your security deposit was used up for the last two months rent. So what day are you going? Tough market. I gotta clean up and put a fresh coat of paint on the walls."

"Uh. . ."

Click.

Speed dial.

"Slick, honey, what's this about moving out?"

"Oh yeah baby. Ah wuz gonna tell ya 'bout dat tanight. Ya see me an' Carnuba are gonna try to make a go of it. . ."

"And the money you told me you took out of my bank account to pay the rent?"

"Uh. . . muscatel and Foxwoods, baby."

Click.

Head's exploding. . .

. . . just as the office manager rounds the corner and says, "Why is the Staples bill so heavy and the supply closet so light?"

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

So $1700.00 of theft yielded:

No husband.

No home.

No savings.

No job.

One can only pray that some good Samaritan / friend would take the time to attentively sit and listen to Melamine's tale of woe and then solidly smack her up side the head and say, "Girl, what wuz you thinking?", in hopes of avoiding a repeat performance.