american express - I should have left home without it

My fucking head is going to explode. Seriously.

I spent 5 hours today (luckily had a lot of conf calls - multi-tasking!) going through every corporate am ex statement since March of 2007 along side the scanned in copies of all of my expense reports trying to find out why I have a $1,400 balance on my card.

If that sounds like not such a hard task, let me clarify by saying I have at least 2 expense reports every month, and for the past two years have had one submitted a week. Last year I charged about $200,000 worth of stuff to my am ex.

"Well," you're probably thinking "can't your company just run a report to see what expenses on your card haven't been assigned to an expense report?"

Yeah buster, I'm one step ahead of you on that one. I tried that. We use a system, the same one I've used at every company I've worked at since 1995, that uploads your charges and then you assign them to an expense report and the bills get paid. But, what has happened is somehow charges that I didn't make got assigned to my account in the system. Charges I did make probably ended up on someone else's account (for example, I had an airfare that never showed up in my card data). That has never happened to me before in the 12 years of using the system other places - only at this company.

When that started happening last year I called the morons who handle this shit in my company. They said "oh, just delete those expenses if you didn't make them." Regarding my missing charges, they said "you can't put them on a report manually, they will be rejected. We'll try to figure out what's going on."

What, me worry?

Anyway, since November of 2009 I have been trying to get this issue resolved. Even though Am Ex and I can both prove that expenses being applied to my account were never made by me, my company can't figure out how to take them off my account (e.g. $900 of stuff charged in New Jersey - car rental and hotel - when I can prove I was in the UAE when the charges were incurred). Am Ex tells me they can see the name on the receipts and it isn't my name - they know whose account the charges should go on but my company can't figure out, in their system, how to move the charges.

My company suggested I pay the $1400 until things get sorted out because my credit card is about to be turned off. Fat fucking chance. After almost a year and a half this problem is not any closer to being resolved. I can probably sweet talk am ex into cutting me a break, again, but I'm racking up late fees to the tune of $45 - $80 a month. But I'm afraid if I pay the charges my company will never give my money back.

They did give me a form to fill out for expenses over 1 year old. Unfortunately, after I filled it out and sent it in, I found out it was the wrong form. I filled out the new form a week later, and was told the process of who I have to submit the form to was also changed, so the person I sent it to just ignored it, and my subsequent emails, and it wasn't until I went to her boss that I found out I wasn't supposed to send the form to her anymore. No one can tell me who to send the form to, but they're going to email me real soon.

I would ask my manager, but he's not really my manager because he's working a different job now and they haven't replaced him with someone else. I inquired who my manager was and the response was a copy of the job description for my manager with the suggestion I apply for the position.

Fucking fuck I am annoyed!

I'll drink to that!

I saw this sign when I was on a walk today. In case you can't read it, it says "Fuck it I need a drink Please help".

Had the person who made the sign still been around I would have ponied up some cash for a few rounds.

bacon bird

My friend Cam sent me this picture last night. Her son James shot a pheasant, then her ex cut it's head off, and then she covered it with bacon. They ate it for dinner last night. I am glad I wasn't invited.

GROSS!!!!!!!!

I ate mac and cheese for dinner last night.