Are Your Employees Slowing Down Your Collections?

PROBLEM

This is another entry in our Stupid Business Stories collection

I once had an employee who was responsible for getting the mail to the post office each day. Things went okay to begin with. But then I began to notice a slow-down in payments. When I called the clients, I heard the same story – they had not received an invoice, or it had taken 3 weeks to be delivered.

I asked the employee about the mail. She told me that she dropped it off at the same mailbox, but had noticed that postal workers often missed picking up at the mailbox for a day or two.

That sounded strange to me, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I asked her to make sure to not use that box anymore, and to take the mail to the main post office. Next month, the same thing happened. I terminated the employee. I still don’t know what happened to the mail for those two months.

The stupid business decision was buying into the employee’s story in the first place. I don’t lie, and I don’t expect people who work for me to be lying either. But, by not trusting my gut, I allowed her to interfere with communications, and slowed down collection of accounts receivable. Plus I paid her for another month of sub-standard work.

LESSON

I learned a couple of lessons here. First, it’s naive to think that everyone shares my ethics. Automatically assuming that people do is a sure-fire way to get myself into trouble.

The second lesson I learned was to listen to my gut. If I had done that right up front, I would have saved a lot of time, money and effort.

This has been a very hard lesson for me. My instinct is to trust first and ask questions later. I wanted to believe she was just a bad apple. But after it happened again with another employee, I have had to face reality. Now, I trust slowly, and verify often.

THANKS TO:
anonymous

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