What are the Odds?

I am working home office again this week (as you can tell from the lack of posts). I finally got myself to sit down last night to enter my expenses in for the previous week. This is a chore I don’t like even though it doesn’t take long and it’s not all that difficult. I try to make myself do it on Saturday but that slid into Tuesday.

The ritual goes something like this.

We enter our expenses on-line, assign the cost center to be billed, enter where we went and what we did. The system assigns a unique trip number. We have to write our personnel number and trip number on each page of our expenses we are sending in so they can be matched if they get out of order. We only have to send receipts in for items over a certain value which is higher than most meals I eat.

So I have devised a system that I enter just enough to get my trip started. I save it and paste that number into a Word document and print out about 8 pages with my trip and personnel number. This part I have down…

I go to print and there is not a single sheet of paper in the printer. Since this printer is networked to all computers in the house I figure there will be a line of things that have not made it there yet that will kick off. Strange enough my last print job just used the last sheet of paper. It’s happened before but not a common occurrence.

I move on to the taping down the receipts on the forms I just created so I can fax them to the expense department later. I pull out my tape dispenser and have just enough tape to tape down one small receipt. So it’s off on the search for another roll of tape. I get my roll of tape and continue the ritual.

I keep all my receipts even if they are below the value I have to turn in. I just want them if I ever get audited (which really has not ever happened, but I’m picky that way). So I generally staple them together and attach them to my reports that I faxed in. Wouldn’t you know the last staple was used earlier in the day. So off I go again on the search for staples.

I fax in my receipts and expense report (30 minutes later due to all the searching for supplies) and I’m ready to file them away in my shoebox file cabinet. I always highlight the date of the report so it’s easy to find if I flip through them. I reach over and grab a highlighter off my desk and the darn thing is out of ink.

Least to say I’m still looking for the cameras in my office. I’m sure this will show up on candid camera someday. I mean what are the odds of not having paper in your printer, tape in you tape dispenser, staples in your stapler or ink in your highlighter all in the same day.

Good thing that was my last task of the day.