i'm a friggin' gumshoe

So! Remember when I said I'm a scam spotter? Done spotted a scam at the workplace, ya'll.

There's this guy, an IT guy, who mostly works from home. I have no idea what he actually contributes to our office, but I assume it's some sort of tech support role. I've had to call this guy a couple times, like when one of the color printer's parts just popped right off (to which he said "Does it still work? Yep? Then don't worry about it!"). He talks really fast and likes to insinuate he's cooler and more important than me because he works from home.

I usually talk to him when he needs to order office supplies. I'm the official Orderer. I'm the only one who knows the almighty Staples ID and user password. BOO-yaw. IT guy didn't really start ordering anything until about six months ago, and it was usually pens. NICE pens. Couldn't find the word BIC anywhere on 'em. I thought it was a little...hm...presumptuous of him to assume he deserved $7 pens, nay, a handful of $7 pens.

Also a little nervy to ask for a stack of blank DVDs.
Oh, go ahead and make that two stacks.
And some regular ol' blank CDs. For good measure. Even though there are already plenty of stacks to plunder here in the office.

I never said anything. I just ordered with raised eyebrows and quietly wondered if I should be getting in on this ordering frenzy for obviously non-work-related accoutrements. After all, I am the one who reconciles the credit card bill. I ordered a Dr. Grip pencil once and giggled lovingly at it while I clicked and gripped, clicked and gripped. It felt so naughty. But I'm a little paranoid and thought for sure my boss pores over his Purchasing credit card statement just looking for a reason to fire me. (Nevermind the fact that a simple perusal of this here blog could potentially cause the same.)

COME ON, blank DVDs? What, are you burning IT instructional videos? Starting your own lil piracy shop? Hmmm?

But I still didn't say anything. Not when he ordered a wireless optical mouse. Not when he ordered another a week later. Not when he ordered an external hard drive, a keychain memory card, or a THIRD fucking stack of DVD R/Ws. But I'm hardly his boss and I had to admit that some of these things seemed viably work-related.

When I was processing the credit card charges online last week, I realized I had placed 15 orders for him over the past month, and all of them had been at least $50. That's a lot of fucking dough to be spent on someone who probably shouldn't be ordering anything but pens and maybe the wireless mouse, and whose company email contains the same insulting tag mine does: "Non-Big Company," aka, Technically A Contractor. And here's The Thing:

I get no pleasure from being a fink, it is something I steadily avoid. I am very much of the "damn the man" attitude, especially when the man is a company that represents 1/10 of the entire US economy yet can't seem to find room in their budget for my salary plus health insurance, rendering me a perma-temp. I felt like I would be betraying some sort of damn-the-man allegiance that naturally occurs between peons of similar status if I were to run to my boss in a jealousy-fueled huff (because I am too shy to order CD R/W stacks and nifty keychain memory cards).

But this morning? His list went like this:
--Graphing calculator ($219) bwah-haaa! you use trig in IT? so interesting.
--DVD+R DL spindle ($49) ok, for real, I'll give you $10 for The Devil's Advocate, A Few Good Men, and Basic Instinct.
--Sandisk Memory Card ($50) for a camera. a fucking camera! he has a new baby. maybe his wife's in on this scam.
and, drumroll please....
--a $300 motherfucking mp3 player.

IT Guy wanted to order an mp3 player. A $300 one.

I sat for a moment and stewed over this very ridiculous and scandalous request. The total for this order would have been over $600.

So I grabbed some of my boss's mail and headed to his office.

"Here's some mail for you," I said and plopped it down in front of him.
"Also," I said, growing meaker by the moment, "I thought maybe I should run something past you. IT Guy has asked me to order some expensive things from Staples, including a $300 mp3 player."

"Oh? I didn't even know we were ordering supplies for IT Guy."

FUUUUCK.

"Hm, well...hm! Well! He's been asking me to order stuff for months like I was the right person to ask."

Boss chuckles, thank god. He's a chuckler. He's a very nice older man who isn't as naive as he seems but is a tad more naive than he thinks he is.

"What'd you say he ordered?"

"An mp3 player. For music." And then, because I was feeling my uber-bitch: "Probably not a work-related item."

"Yeah...doesn't sound like it."

And then, because I was feeling very tricked, I said:
"He's been ordering a lot of stuff. If I had gone ahead and ordered what he asked me to today, it would have been well over 600 dollars."

"Well, just tell IT Guy that we've been having budget cuts and he needs to request permission for everything he orders."

And you know what? I don't feel bad about this. Why should this guy get all this free shit? Just because he learned that Administrative Ass-istant doesn't ask questions, she just orders? I feel so stupid.

So then I had to email IT Guy and tell him what was up with these new budget restrictions. He happened to be in the office today and I was taking the passive-aggressive route instead of hunting him down.

His response: "That's fine. What's the new limit?"
My response: "There is no specific limit, but rather a requirement for approval for anything you want to order."
His response: "No problem. So that I order I placed today went through okay? I can expect it tomorrow?"
My (ideal) response: "NO, YOU GREEDY FUCKTARD FUCKER."
My (real) response: "Sorry. It was not approved."


In other news, I think I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair this morning.