WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
I was going to be existential this week about my life, then was going to do a random grab bag. Then I had my work week journey swerve into a ditch at the last minute -- follow me below the squiggle to see how my juggling keeping the life at the bank in my manager's absence was going so well until all the balls dropped right at the end.
So, this week our manager J. went on vacation. And unlike other times where he may have been taking time off but was still accessible through email if something really urgent came up, he was out of the country with no internet access. Normally this is where the assistant manager would come in but ours just got promoted to her own store and we are still waiting for the new one to show. In short, J. directed people in his Out-of-Office reply email to me as the point man for any loans/mortgages and other assorted projects he had going on.
And that was fine by me, though I was a bit nervous. There were a couple minor swerves but for the most part I handled the week pretty well. I even went in yesterday thinking that all I had to do was make it through the day and then I could relax. I should have known better. The ironic part is that the day was actually going pretty well until the last hour before I was supposed to leave. That was when one of J.’s loans went all FUBAR. I really cannot give all the details but basically the loan was at the homestretch and looked like it would be ready to close next week. This is when the underwriters looked at some piece of financials and decided they had to make a much lower counteroffer. Did I mention this was at 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon? Seriously!
And there wasn’t anything I could really do. I tried to get in contact with the underwriters – no answer. The only response I could receive was the form letter stating the terms and a brief response from the processor (who also wasn’t answering her phone). I had to send an email to the customer because SHE wasn’t picking up any of her phones. No response from her until and email that showed after an hour after I was supposed to leave for the day – I was just out the door leaving after working on another project and there was nothing I could do. Apparently she called after I left; our Head Teller called my Blackberry because she was rightly and righteously pissed and I advised him to call a manager we knew at another store.
And now I am beating myself up over this whole thing. As others in the store have told me, I cannot really control what the underwriters do or if they make decisions like this at the last minute. I just feel like it is my fault that, maybe not so much that it fell apart, but that I could not do anything to ease the situation. J. is really good in these situations and I feel like he could have handled this and turned it around somehow. The only thing I could think of is calling a manager at another store for advice but it never really occurred to me because there was probably nothing they would have been able to do. Maybe I could have called the customer right before I left when I heard about her email response but I was exhausted at that point and knew there wasn’t anything I could do. The worst part of it is that I feel like I have disappointed J. and am hoping he won’t be too upset when he returns this later week. As one of my colleagues pointed out, he has had loans like this fall apart before so this will not be an unknown situation but I still feel like I let him down when he was relying on me. Look for a sequel to this as my response to next week’s WYFP…
So, enough about me. What is your FP this week?