#FedEx service is fine but their paperwork abilities are nil

[pieandmurderwednesday]

Shitty Canadian Hangman

Also known as: Arguing With Canada, my new job title.

I could put it on my resume. Role: Front Desk/ Office Administrator. Experience: orders shit for kitchen, argues with Canada.

Realistically, we have issues with exporting things with many different countries, especially Vietnam. But those issues are generally handled by our international office, while Canadian issues tend to fall right on my (completely unqualified) shoulders. 

Background: we were trying to send a laptop to our Vancouver office. A thing we have done before. A thing we have had issues doing before, and those issues were long and arduous and should have been solved already. Because I solved them (mostly).

See link for details: https://pieandmurderwednesday.tumblr.com/post/185484398919/the-continuing-struggles-fedex

So there’s this paperwork you fill out, right, for Power of Attorney for FedEx. Supposedly, this means that they will take your account and deal with all customs issues with a certain region and never bother you with it again. Supposedly.

Here’s the thing, though. I filled that paperwork out when I was young and fresh-faced and innocent, a mere babe in the woods (about three months ago), and also it had already been passed around to Canada, Texas, back to me, to the office next to mine, to the Chief Financial officer, back to the neighboring office, back to me, then to Texas and Canada again, and then to FedEx. Twice.

That paperwork got around, is all I’m saying.

And it asked for a “Business Number,” which no one at the time knew, so I left it blank and it got sent to Customs and they accepted it and everything was fine.

For like two months.

Then we try to send another laptop, secure in the knowledge that we have Filled Out All The Things, and it got stuck at the border. Because they wanted a Business Number.

A Business Number, for all you lucky bastards who have never needed to know, is a tax thing in Canada that you apparently apply for when you set up a business there. We didn’t have one (I think?) until March of this year, because back then our Canada office was under a different name and only used by remote contractors, so our shipments were casual instead of commercial and basically no one in Canada gave a single solitary fuck.

Then our parent company acquired us and our Canada branch and set up a business there Officially and didn’t bother to get an import-export account (which does fuck-all except add some extra digits after your Business Number and pacify Customs when you try to send shit to yourself, so I can understand why they never bothered). 

So we had the paperwork but didn’t put the number, FedEx and Canada both thought this was a terrible heinous crime, and they contacted us to get The Number to resolve the issue.

I was on break and totally unaware of the Canadian Shit Storm I was about to walk into when I returned. The laptop had been sent, all bells and whistles attached, I returned to the office to start my day, and then the issue was dumped in my lap.

So I sent our FedEx representative the copies of the paperwork we had already filled out, including the paper that explicitly stated that from this moment forward, they would deal with this shit so we didn’t have to, and they said “this looks fine except you need a Business Number or all of your hard work means nothing.”

(Why is it that you need a Canadian Business number for a Non-Resident power of attorney form anyway??? Doesn’t the very fact that you are Not A Resident of Canada imply that you don’t have a Canadian Business Number??????)

Anyway, I emailed the Canadian IT guy back asking for the Number, he sent me a number that identified their business but had the wrong suffix-- intended only for tax purposes, and not import-export. He suggested I ask payroll about it because accounting people apparently know these things.

I sent the number to FedEx, saying “This is what we have, the suffix is different apparently but can we at least use this for now?” And what I got back was, “We’ll check with Canada if this is correct but without the all-important suffix, this number is just farts in the wind.”

So they called Canada, and then they emailed me in a tither because “OH HEAVENS, CANADA SAYS THIS NUMBER IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR COMPANY.”

To which my response was “Shit.” And a moment later, “What the fuck? That can’t be right, this is the number we use to pay our people, OBVIOUSLY IT IS OURS.”

But then I remembered my company exists under an umbrella company (parent company? I forget the term. Our tiny IT ex-startup has a helicopter parent, is what I’m saying) and it might be under that name instead.

Told FedEx, they said, “If it is under that other company, you need to fill out these three forms and then check if the number is correct and then click your heels together three times and pray the Wicked Bitch of the North will accept your humble offering.”

To which I saw turn red, wrote and deleted several very strongly worded emails, finally whittled it down to a polite-sounding “That seems excessive, can we at least check that the number is under our name and see if we have an account without sending the paperwork to get lost in our other office for a week, please oh please? And also, we pay for all this shit and not our parent company, so isn’t it technically ours to deal with anyway?”

Cue Shitty Canadian Hangman, where I hope at least the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) was having fun, because FedEx Poor Bastard (herefore dubbed FPB) and I sure weren’t. Vaguely, it went like this.

Me: *calls FPB* Okay, so this is our company’s name, is it under that name?

FPB : *calls CRA* “Is this the name?”

CRA: “No, you have three more guesses and then I take your first-born child.”

FPB: *calls me* “No.”

Me: “Okay, is it ~slightly more official name of our company~?”

FPB: ...huh.

FPB: *calls CRA* “How about this?”

CRA: “The first word is correct, I cannot tell you more. You have two more guesses, then I take your first-born child.”

FPB: *calls me* “One word was correct, but is there an official suffix or anything?”

Me: “.... Hang on.” *stands up too fast, bruises knee badly against corner of desk, limps to supervisor* “What’s our company’s official name?”

Supervisor: “~Name Canada has already rejected once~”

Me: “...oh.” *limps back to desk* “This is it, bub.”

FPB: “Can you please call Canada this time, they scare me.”

Me: “Fine.”

Me: *calls CRA*

Me: *on hold*

Me: *on hold some more*

Me: *on hold for an hour*

Me: *opens email, sees Accounting has sent Official Canada Name of Business, which is... just great.*

CRA: “Hi, how can I help you?”

Me: “Can you tell me if this number is associated with ~Actual Official Business Name, for real this time~?”

CRA: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay, phew! So, do we have an import-export account?”

CRA: “I cannot release that information without authorization.”

Me: “... But I work here. Well, not in Canada, but this is our company. That we want to send a thing to. I just want to send a thing and I need to know if you will let me do that.”

CRA: “You need to fill out form IDK and IDC, and also form GO FUCK YOURSELF before I release that information.”

Me: *dying inside* “Okay fine, you’ve been very helpful. Have a... nice day.”

CRA: “Va te faire foutre.”

Me: “To you as well.”

Back to FedEx, they said they couldn’t do shit either, dumped the whole mess into Accounting’s hands, because they originally didn’t set up whatever account it was and I, a lowly front desk worker, don’t have the authorization.

Shirley Bassey: “I love her to bits, but she doesn’t have the authorization.”

This is the culmination of four days of work.

I have talked with FedEx, with Canada Revenue Agency, with our Vancouver office IT person and hiring manager, with Accounting and with my supervisor, and the result of this effort and time is: I confirmed that the number that we use is, in fact ours. And that I cannot use it until Accounting consults with Legal and sets up the fucking account we seem to have been using already (because how else did we manage to send anything before????). And I googled how to curse people in French while I was on hold.

So all in all I was very polite on the phone, while my subtitles were more like, 

*raises middle finger* 

“Thank you for your help” 

*raises other middle finger* 

“throughout this process” 

*raises third middle finger* 

“and I hope you have a great day.” 

*finger-spelling F-U-C-K- O-F-F* 

“I appreciate your time” 

*scribbling on paper “You Useless Bastards”* 

“and I hope you have a great weekend” 

*continues writing “along with the last of my fucks, which has died of fuck deprivation”* 

“Goodbye!” 

*finishes writing “I hope you step on a Lego every night before bed and that the toilet paper always runs out when you go to a public bathroom”*