27 April 2005

A fun email

I saw this email when I logged in at work this morning:

_____________________________________________
From: 6 CS/MacDill Helpdesk (SCBNN)
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 9:05 PM
To: MacDill All
Subject: Finance Pre-Deployment Briefings

This e-mail is sent on behalf of Lt Col Tony Grogean, 6 CPTS/CC

$$$ Finance Pre-Deployment Briefings $$$

    Finance is conducting two out-processing briefings to financially prepare members for the upcoming AEF deployment. The first briefing was held on 20 April 05 in the MXG Auditorium and was attended by over 60 members. The briefings include information on:

      - Combat Zone Entitlements
      - Travel Advances
      - Accrual Vouchers
      - Final Settlement Vouchers
      - MyPay Access and Restricted Access
      - Financial Powers of Attorney

    $$$ Reminder: The next and final briefing will be held on Wednesday 27 Apr 05 at 0800 in the Base Theater $$$


Here's what's important to note: the next and final briefing was held this morning at 0800, just as most people are reporting in to work. It would have been great to know about this briefing, because I could have directed my deployers to attend the briefing; same for other deployment managers across the base.

But, when was the email sent? Why, it was sent at 9:05 yesterday night. They gave us 10 hours, 55 minutes advance notice about this briefing--and they gave that notice at an hour when nobody was left at work and there was no time to inform people about the briefing.

I'd like to know how many people actually showed up. Maybe that was their point. Finance is widely regarded as the most appallingly ineffective unit on any base in the Air Force, known for routinely failing to do their job correctly and for creating new initiatives, such as the new Defense Travel System, to force everyone else to do their jobs for them. This is just more evidence of how inept our finance system is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Huh, I thought the message was SPAM. I do believe my SPAM filter would as well. One employee sent out a message in all caps, bold, and in various colors, and it was marked as probable SPAM. She didn't know why that happened and asked how she could stop it in the future. We told her to quit writing her messages so that they looked like SPAM.

As far as finance, I have come to realize that you have to keep a record of all business communications. Don't phone me about it, send me an e-mail. Everything from Financial aid messups to Accounting telling you today that you have funds to cover a purchase and then denying it tomorrow.