Red Tape

Work is slow...er today than normal.

I spent about half of my time today getting some equipment repaired. Actually, it's being repaired by a service company; my portion of the work was cutting through red tape. They sent me a quote for the work in May, which I signed off on. I decided to follow up with them today since it wasn't supposed to take this long. As it turns out, there was a second form stating my intent to pay that I never got. As I was filling it out I saw that they needed a PO number. I sent a copy of the quote to the purchasing guy I usually deal with hoping that he would send me a PO number. He sent me an out of office reply instead. That meant I had to go through his minions which require a Purchase Request form before they will submit the PO. They didn't have a copy of the latest form, so I had to dig to find it. Then I had to find a charge number since our charge numbers all changed a couple of weeks ago. I got that and filled out the purchase request and turned it in. Then I get a message back that my boss needs to sign off on it. I replied saying that as a manager, I can sign off on anything less than $5000, which this was. Then I get a reply that I can't be both the requestor AND the approver. So I had to get one of my guys to re-fill out the purchase request and sign it as a requester, so that I could approve it and turn it in. I finally got the PO number I needed to fill out the vendor's form and turned it in.

The rest of my day was spent putting together different reports to my boss. Boring stuff but someone has to do it.