Directing Us Into Another Recession

(I work for a financial leasing firm which deals with a major electronics store. In this company we have two directors who like to think they know our jobs better than we do. In reality, they do little more than interfere and make an a** of themselves to the extent our manager has told us to ignore them. One day when dealing with an application from a store, one of the in-store advisors calls us to see why customer has failed ID check. After asking a couple of questions it appears that the customer only just moved address and hasn’t had to time to update everything. Happily he agrees to come back and do it in 30 days. When I get off the phone I see both directors sitting on either side of me shaking their heads.)

Me: “Err… Hi!”

Director #1: “What was all that about?”

Director #2: “Why didn’t you process that?”

Me: “We couldn’t ID him. He had only just moved house and not everything was updated.”

Director #1: “So why weren’t you more helpful?”

Director #2: “Surely there other ways of getting around this; what is the normal process?”

Me: “Well, if we can’t ID someone then we can’t proceed to a credit check, and that could potentially be fraud if we ignored it.”

(The two directors just look at each other, then one of them stares at me like I am a complete moron.)

Director #1: “I’m concerned here…”

Director #2: “We should be processing EVERYTHING that comes through. You can’t just turn clients away.”

Me: “I understand, but we have protocol to follow to prevent fraud because there have been a couple of reported case over the last year!”

Director #1: “But how is it practical to deny a customer finance?”

(I don’t bother answering because I am honest confused; what do they want here?)

Director #2: “Right, here’s what YOU are going to do. You will pass all those details onto [Credit Manager] and get her to process this and will personally call this person to apologize!”

Me: “But we can’t—”

Director #1: “Don’t argue, just send it. We’ll wait here so we make sure it’s done.”

(I send the details to the credit manager, who loathes these two even more than I do. Within minutes of doing so she is walking across the room looking very annoyed.)

Credit Manager: “Why are you bothering [My Name] with this? This can’t be processed!”

Director #1: “We have to make sure that—”

Credit Manager: “Look, why do you think we have these measures in place? TO PREVENT FRAUD!”

Director #2: “We just think what’s being done here isn’t practical.”

Credit Manager: “And approving finance to a guy we can’t identify is? Seems a little skewed in my opinion, lads!”

(Immediately the two of them go quiet, one of the directors refuses to look at her.)

Credit Manager: “Why don’t you let [My Name] just do his work? There are other deals we can actually process.”

(The two directors hightail it away muttering to each. The credit manager just shakes her head in disbelief.)

Credit Manager: “Couple of bloody idiots!”

(From then on our manager told them that if they had a problem they were to take it up with her, not just confront the staff directly. Those two never spoke to us again.)