Thursday, August 6, 2009.

Today was a crazy day. The information I'm about to write doesn't necessarily pertain to me, but it's something I witnessed firsthand. An OSJ from another region was visiting Boss from San Diego was pretty much at work all day today. The OSJ (aka OSJ-B) from San Diego was very shocked on how we handle things at work.

1) Today was HK's birthday breakfast celebration. So everyone met in the conference room except for JG and Boss (which they arrived later, due to a conference call.) So after about 15-20 minutes, both JG and Boss show up and Boss comes in and says that Financial Network is finally being partnered up with someone else. Boss blurts out some other news and the OSJ from San Diego has this puzzled look. Even though she did not sit in the conference call, it sounded like she was 'surprised' of the news that Boss had just said. OSJ-B had a few responses, because she was looking for clarification and possibly wanted to send emails out to her Regional Director or Representatives and Boss wasn't able to concrete news. Boss kept on saying it would happen within a week and possibly within 2 days. Comment: OSJ-B probably was obviously surprised on the news and was prying for details and Boss wasn't able to give them. Personally, I found Boss' recap a little confusing. We will see in 5 business days if anything materializes. Based on what I've seen in the last 8 months, Boss is just making stuff up.

2) So the OSJ-B is telling stories on how she runs her business. Boss hears this and tells HK, JG, and myself that OSJ-B does things 'differently' down in San Diego. According to Boss, they run business operations differently. So Boss says that OSJ-B receives most of her money from overrides on other reps while Boss maintains a book. OSJ-B responds and says that 50% of her Net Income/Pay is from overrides and the other 50% is from her own book. I heard her mention that revenue was on the lines of $2mm. So Boss gets defensive and tries to make an argument that Net Income/Pay is not a true evaluator and that Net Gross is a better indicator. Boss was arguing that the 50% from her book Gross was not 50% from the overrides. (I didn't want to get into the debate, but who in their right mind would make an argument on Gross. Net is what goes into the bank account!) So Boss was getting defensive and was saying that OSJ-B spent more time managing and that Boss couldn't do that management style, because Boss was seeing 4 clients per day. OSJ-B in return, got defensive and said she does spend a lot of her time managing her book. This went back and forth for a little bit. Comment: Boss was just trying to make herself feel better by trying to put OSJ-B down and saying that the reason she's probably doing better is because of the rep overrides she receives.

3) OSJ-B discussed how her clientelle was mostly on wrap fees. Boss defends her book and says that she can't bring herself to put clients in that fee structure, because it's hard to justify the value and doesn't feel that if she didn't do an adequate job, it's hard to justify the % of asset fee that is charged to the client on an annual basis. Comment: A lot of bosses clients are on variable annuities which carry an expense higher than 1% annually. Not sure how my Boss can make the argument she doesn't want her clients being charged a wrap fee annually, when they're practically paying that already in the form of an annuity.

4) OSJ-B asks Boss how is the network encrypted. Boss comes out and says she has no idea and not to ask her those things because she doesn't want to deal with anything else other than managing. Comment: Talk about pure laziness. If Boss doesn't want the responsibilities that come with managing, she shouldn't be doing it. I think EVERYONE would love to sit back and call themselves OSJ manager and do absolutely nothing.

5) So OSJ-B and JG went to buy some RAM for our computers today. JG used his credit card and would seek reimbursement. Boss finds out and nearly flips out. She was arguing that JG should not have put that on the credit card, because it would be a red flag if an auditor caught it. And she said she knows this, because of her experience with audits. Comments: um...i'm not even sure I need to explain this. Since when does a red flag arise if a business expense and business expense reimbursement is properly documented with receipts. I believe in my 10 year tenure of working, it's pretty common for people to fill out an expense report and be reimbursed respectively.