doing things the dad way
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
When I was young I always marveled at my father's ability to get things done by refusing to make someone else's problem his own. I've been putting into practice myself these days.
On Friday I woke in the middle of the night with the realization that I had likely missed a deadline on filing a CPP payment to the benevolent CRA. This would be my second instance of such a missed deadline and the fine would come to 20%. I wrote to my accountant (at 2:30 in the morning) and sure enough, it had been due Wednesday. So I called the accountant and expressed my dismay and asked how I was meant to know how much or when the payment was due. She agreed, and asked me to come in. We went over what she'd provided and she found a variety of problems with what she'd given me "as estimates!" She then relented and said that she'd cover the fines. In this, I was doing something that my dad had always demonstrated: get any and all counter-parties involved and say "I'm not happy" until someone steps up.
Then on Monday this week (yesterday) I called our cell phone provider to ask where was the replacement SIM card I'd ordered back on the 10th. It turned out that those rascals at Purolator had decided that being presented with a single door and single buzzer when they came to our walk-up meant that we hadn't put a sufficient address on it "because it didn't have an apartment number". Purolator had finally sent the SIM back to our cell provider's place in Burnaby that morning. So I rang up the cell company again and once again kept saying "I'm not happy" and then dad's final gambit of casually asking, "Say, what is the cost of leaving our contract?" At the end I had a new SIM coming "overnight by Canada Post" (sic) and for free: a $30 saving over the original failed delivery. It cost me a week's use of my phone, but the provider is now paying for my having lost the old SIM in Haneda airport.
So, thanks for the training dad!