Friday morning arrives, and, after getting this meeting postponed several times, the two RCG players’ boss has finally begun a meeting, with all their concerns about employee turnover.
I might be the screamo of A/R, my boss always makes me deal with the worst of the delinquent customers because sometimes you don’t have a choice, and screaming louder than they do might be your last resort, Marjorine starts thinking about what this new day at work holds for her. When her boss invites her, along with a few employees, to discuss employee turnover, whom Gordon and a few of the more experienced workers, to a meeting on Teams:
“The recent events left me with no choice but to call this meeting. It appears that morale has been decreasing lately, and costing us a lot in employee turnover. I apologize for these repeated postponements” the two players’ boss starts the meeting.
“I mentioned a rapid change in skillset requirements last time, but what else do you feel is problematic?” Gordon asks his colleagues in the virtual room.
“The one thing I can rule out is work-life balance. However, there are definitely times when I feel on edge because I’m micromanaged in my work!” Marjorine whines.
“If you think you’re micromanaged here, Marjo, there are far worse industries to work in for someone who dreads micromanagement! Such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals and nuclear power, and that’s only because of red tape!” her boss scolds Marjo.
“We’re not given the opportunity to learn new skills as appropriate for the rapid change in skillsets! We would love to know if providing us with training is cheaper than to hire someone with a certain skillset, or the other way around!” another coworker voices a complaint.
“Exactly: you act without using the data properly! Like I asked to have demand letters sent to such-and-such based on the A/R aging data, and you told me about being unsure as to whether a certain customer could even be collected from, even in part! Maybe I should make this determination, but I’m afraid I might lack the knowledge of clients’ industries to make it!”
“You scold employees for no good reason, too!” Gordon laments their boss’ attitude. “A/R collection is not an exact science, but knowing KPIs and A/P practices of various industries will definitely help!”
“And I feel like hiring procedures might need to be overhauled, too! Perhaps we focus too much on short-term skillsets for hiring people, and not on their ability to learn, on the fly or otherwise!” yet another coworker voices a concern that might be of some relevance to the issue at hand. “High turnover prevents us from developing synergies that might make all of us more productive or work better!”
The foursome of employees invited to the meeting keep bickering about what role each of the factors play in the staff turnover, but Marjo stays out of the hiring process portion of the dispute, since her big beef is about the issuance of demand letters. I feel like there’s only so much I can contribute to this discussion… however, I don’t think we have a whole lot of delinquent customers with 10-Q/Ks available.
Solutions, beyond the need for a clear policy about professional training, as well as an overhaul of hiring (and firing) procedures, tend to be more specific to particular employees.
Sometimes I feel like the boss is putting up this big charade to save face in front of us, and make it look like they’re listening, but changes might be slow to be implemented, if at all. Now, the higher-ups will claim high turnover is intrinsic to certain jobs, or to certain industries, and such-and-such jobs are affected most, but the turnover problem is a problem beyond sales and customer service, Gordon feels a little cautious about the changes.
After the portion of the meeting devoted to the staff turnover ends, the boss turns his attention to Marjorine and talk about her issues with the collection of delinquent accounts receivable.
“Demand letters, like the ones you want to issue for delinquent A/R, would only make the customers sour on us! Do you have another idea for before it gets to a demand letter?” her boss asks for alternatives.
“I already asked to demand full payment before shipment for customers with overdue bills! All we are doing right now is to apply credit memos on the oldest bills!” Marjorine yells at her boss. “Or maybe send the delinquent invoices to collection agencies after sixty days overdue!”
“It might be a little expensive, and also some of the delinquent invoices are from customers who operate with well-defined seasonal cycles. However, the main bonus is that they will issue demand letters and handle the legal issues in our stead!”
“Better get one-third of the delinquent debts collected, net of any collection fees, than nothing at all!”
“One-third is close to a best-case scenario for the sort of delinquent accounts you asked to issue demand letters to!”
“The bonus is that we don’t need to incur the legal fees ourselves, and we don’t need to limit ourselves to a certain account size! So get your act together and shop for a collection agency!” Marjo screams.
“When I said seasonal cycles, certain industries might make and collect the bulk of their money, and hence pay, at certain times of the year only! Or work on long billing cycles if they don’t! What’s delinquent to you then fails to reflect the realities of the customers!”
“Fine, which delinquent clients fall into either category?” Marjo asks him, feeling embarrassed to ask for that info.
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Her face turns red when she realizes that, while she might know how to deal with angry customers wanting to get refunded, as well as with customers who don’t pay in time, perhaps there are subtleties she doesn’t understand.
The answer is comprehensive enough to make her feel like she might need to pare down her list of demand letters, with overdue bills attached. However, between requests for refunds from customers, or questions about blocked orders from other customers, she tries to shop around for collection agencies.
Oh boy: because we have customers from all over the place, we need a collection agency that can also cover the territory our customers come from. However, beyond working on sliding scale fees, I don’t know how to shop for that, Marjo then writes an email to her boss, detailing what commercial debt collection agencies might charge, what services they offer, and their contact info. Maybe, if I am lucky, the boss might let the credit department have a say in an RFP process for debt collection agencies! However, the boss often waits until the brink is near to act! So I have no choice but to be more threatening with each unanswered follow-up request going forward! If necessary, scream louder than him, as I do with the deadbeats!
While on break, though, she checks on her YouTube videos posted last night about RCG’s ghosts and the bug report about trans ghosts getting sleep troubles, both on YouTube and Reddit. About how virulent the flame wars are. Yet, some would-be players ask her questions about why she plays a trans couple alongside a cis one. Especially people who themselves play trans characters. Speaking of which, her most active content deals with the realities of playing trans ghosts.
And her social media contains a handful of requests from those beta testers with trans characters in tow. I’d love to experience the multiplayer aspect of the game with whomever can play whenever I will be able to. They gave me the names of their trans characters.
At the same time, Marjorine’s boss was given a lot to think about upon receipt of her list of prospective collection agencies. The employees make me feel like I make decisions without using the available data. But it makes me wonder which one is worth more: Marjorine, whose costs and value are known to us, or a collection agency. I’m afraid that I am as clueless as Marjo about collection agencies beyond the need to consider the debtors’ seasonal business cycles in deciding whose accounts to mark for collection. That’s an unpleasant surprise for sure... Marjo might be a brat, but she’s dealing with the worst A/Rs for a reason: this is what best fits her among what we can offer in a WFH capacity.
At the end of the work day, Marjo is visibly down by a number of things her boss told her, and feels the need to vent to Gordon before she starts streaming RCG. However, today’s build is about patching a few bugs, such as the sleep troubles endured by trans characters, which she needs to install before she can stream it.
Marjorine: I was told repeatedly about things that make me angry, beyond customers who can’t pay!
Gordon: What do you mean?
Marjorine: I was not given any answers to my requests for demand letters, nor for my plan of using collection agencies!
Or at least for debts not requiring litigation to collect. Litigation is much more expensive than a collection agency, and, as such, should be used only past a certain amount of money owed, Gordon thinks of when to use debt collection agencies vs taking a customer to court. That, even though the higher-ups might be a little wary of losing big customers.
Marjorine: I would just have loved to be able to send demand letters myself, and to have clear guidelines for marking accounts for collection! We have delinquent accounts for months now!
Gordon: I know that A/R was mismanaged before you arrived, and we just sent out monthly automated account statements, invoices and applied credit memos on a FIFO basis!
Marjorine: Now that I identified solutions to the A/R problems, and brought them to the attention of the higher-ups, I just hope that they will implement them. If I need to scream at customers for whom demand letters are issued, and monthly, or until receipt of the payment of overdue bills, so be it!
As the patch is installed for the beta build, Marjo sends out the link to her Twitch account to those people who wanted to watch her play her trans characters. But little does she know is that most of her viewers are favorable to trans people IRL or, at least, feel like a video game gives them an opportunity to see a more accepting society towards trans people that might not be achievable otherwise.
And, of course, before the installation is finalized, she checks the patch notes for any indication that the sleep disorders for trans characters are fixed. Woohoo! Sleep disorders are fixed for trans characters, and now they shouldn’t have them beyond what would cause them for others, she tries to contain her joy while perusing the rest of the patch notes.
When the installation ends, Marjorine is getting ready to start the stream, with her would-be viewers wanting in to see her trans couple being played:
“Welcome to day three of playing with trans remote-controlled ghosts! Tonight, we are going to get the production of outfits underway! But first, it has come to my attention that crafting items whose source material requires farming crops is best done with one character in the farming career!” Marjorine announces to her viewers.
This means I must pick one character to stop freelancing, and turn that character into a farm hand, and hopefully a “work-from-home” one… she starts musing as she picks her male cis character to turn into a virtual farm hand. Fingers crossed that I would be able to get rewards from the farming career that will help me farm! Cotton or food.
And, in the same vein, she has her female cis character turn to the culinary arts, hoping to maximize the money her ghostly household could earn from these garden plots.
However, she feels like it’s a little early for her to earn any benefit from baking since dish washing is the earliest stage of the culinary arts career, and there is no work-from-home option for that toon at this point.
“Here we go: we need to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, to the extent feasible with the resources we have. Of course, it’s the early game, so it’s going to be rough for now…” Marjo sighs while she’s in-game playing with her ghosts.
Her chat tells her about what career combos go well with each other for crafters, beyond farming and either culinary arts or fashion, other combos include forestry or mining with construction or sculpture. However, one thing sticks out to her, beyond the choice of professions based on desired outputs:
Artabeles: Unless you just want to sell goods to market, you’re not going to experience the multiplayer parts of the game if you stay home!
Ouch. I need to explore more of this game’s world if I want to make the most out of it! It starts to dawn on her that she needs to click on a button that looks like a smartphone on the bottom left of the screen. With different functions, such as calling for services, contact list, complete with relationship bars, and, of course, the option to hail a cab, and take whoever the player wants to a neighborhood or district of their choice.
Speaking of which, Artabeles sends her a suggestion of where to meet up in-game, while leaving her cis characters to their own devices at home, except for her male cis character, whom she makes him write a book.