Save A Penny, Lose A Person

While I was working for this company, we sometimes had to file papers in person at municipalities. If they were close enough to our office, someone from the office would go; if they were further away, we would ask engineers in a good relationship with us to do it for us and invoice us for the time.

The thing is that the owner, thinking of being smart, would always forget to pay those invoices within the agreed terms and would always ask us to “check that [Engineer] has been paid before asking him to go to [Town] again”. Not being large amounts, it wasn’t worth the trouble for the creditor to go beyond sending reminders for the outstanding debt.

A few weeks after the owner let me go (again, because paying a new hire is cheaper than paying someone with three years’ experience), I received a call from my former senior in the office:

Senior: “Hi, [My Name], we need to file some papers at [Town A, 60 km south of the office], can you do it for us?”

Me: “I live in [Town B, 13 km West from office], I am nowhere close to there.”

Senior: “Don’t your parents live in [Town C, near Town A]?”

Me: “They do, I don’t. Me going there would be even further away than you going there. I suggest you find someone else.”

I mentally added while waving a symbolic middle finger:

Me: “And I am not going to fall for the owner’s penny-saving trick and chase my money for months.”