Shut Up & File

I apologize for the “rudeness” of the title; however, this was the actual subject line in an email that our Kelly received a few weeks back. In order for you to better understand, I need to “set-up” the scene for you.

I have mentioned Kelly in previous posts. Kelly works in my department, and she is responsible for servicing the loans the company has approved over the years. Our present portfolio, taking into consideration all three loan programs we administer, includes about 375 loans for around $90,000,000.

Since my agency is a little “slow” about coming into the electronic age…I’m working on it…we still maintain “paper” files on each and every loan. Some of the funding sources even require that we hold onto the borrower’s file long after the loan has been paid in full. I’m talking about forty 4-drawer file cabinets, bulging with expandable file folders, each containing a tree’s worth of paper. I cringe every time I have to send a loan to a funding source because we have to maintain a copy of everything we send them. You get the picture…we’ve got…literally…a ton of paper files.

Anyway, Kelly has one of the “busiest” jobs in this agency. She is constantly in demand and on the phone. You can imagine...375 active borrowers…any of whom may have a question about their loan at any given time. Her responsibilities are many and varied and can be as simple as providing a loan balance or the interest paid the previous year, or as complicated as preparing loan subordinations or liquidations. She also has to stay on top of loan delinquencies and collections, but that is a whole “other” post, so I’ll just stick to the files on this one.

Perhaps the most tedious part of Kelly’s job pertains…as you may have already guessed…to the files. Copies of letters sent to the borrowers have to be maintained in the file’s correspondence folder. All “servicing action” documentation has to be filed in the servicing folder. Updated financial and insurance information has to be…well...you get the idea.

One of the things I explained to Kelly, when I interviewed her for this position, was the importance of the files and that it was absolutely essential that they be well-maintained and updated. She, of course, expressed her sincerest understanding of the responsibilities that came with the position and assured me she could handle the challenge. But Kelly was badly in need of employment and would have said or…as it turned out…omitted some pretty damning information…in order to get the job. Again, another story for another time. (Don't get me wrong, she does a good job.)

Oh, and to make matters worse, when they renovated our offices a few months back, the new configuration resulted in relocating all the file cabinets from their very own cozy room into our office space. They line the walls on either side of the cubicles where Kelly and Casey are stationed. So, horror of horrors…we now “ARE” the file room.

Now you have the set-up. Filing? A boring, tedious, mind numbingly monotonous…yet…vitally important component of Kelly’s job.

So, one Friday afternoon back in the winter, Kelly begrudgingly set about filing away the documents that had been accumulating on her desk for…well…quite some time. She was not happy about it and had assumed her typical "pouty" face and was whining and grumbling the whole time.

It was Josh, the assistant comptroller, whose office is just around the corner from one row of file cabinets, who happened to hear Kelly’s mournful diatribe that wintry Friday afternoon, thus resulting in the aforementioned email...complete with the first picture you see below. It was all done in good fun and we all had a hearty laugh…Kelly included. She is…bless her heart…a good-natured soul.

Thanks to Kelly, the work day has been divided into things like: "un"happy hour, whining hour, purgatory hour, and torture hour. Who knew work could be so much fun?

This is what Kelly looks like when she's up to her eyeballs in files.