Dude, I Totally Have Layers

…like an onion!

As you, the intrepid (and might I add incredibly attractive, well educated, oozing good taste) Blissfully Unaware reader may or may not know, I am currently working as a very small cog inside the back office machine of a gigantic financial corporation. (Read that as ‘paper shuffling office drudge’ but hey, it pays!!!) Now, the incredibly condensed version of my job is: taking a file which is straight off the Loan Officer’s desk and getting it ready to be handed off to a Processor or Under Writer. It may not sound that exciting…and it isn’t…but it is important and I’m extremely good at it, at least that’s what my boss keeps telling me.

Part of this process involves actually flipping through the files and making sure that they contain some basic documents, and if any of these documents are missing the file is placed into 'hard stop,’ which essentially pulls the file out of it’s spot in the line. Once the LO or their PSA (a fancy name for ’assistant’) provide me with the missing document or information I remove the file from hard stop and put it back in line. Easy enough to understand, right?

Right?

Bueller?

Anyway! When I put a file into ‘hard stop’ I have to send an email to the LO and their manager explaining why the file is in hard stop. And this really isn’t that big of a deal…but you wouldn’t know it to hear the loan officers complain! Apparently I’m building up quite an ’anti-fan’ base around the company. People hate me and they’ve never even met me!

Now, today we had some visitors in the office, a Sales Manager, his Loan Officers, and their PSAs. The daily mail, containing all the new files for the day, arrived and part of the check in process involves entering the files into a log. So I’m standing at the reception desk while the files are checked in when the PSAs wander out of the underwriting department and make their way up the desk and the conversation that took place is as follows:

PSA 1: Is HistoryDiva here?
(Yes, of course she used my real name…and yes, she mispronounced my last name several times.)

Receptionist: HistoryDIVA?

PSA 2: Yeah! We want to meet the OGRE who keeps hard stopping our files!

Receptionist: *points to me*

Me: Hi.

PSAs 1 & 2: *embarrassed silence*

Shrek: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers. *Sigh*