|
| Thursday, September 06, 2007 |
| Dollars only, please |
Ata has been happily working away on her new assignment. Her first task was entering all the crop surveys that had been returned. Crop surveys are sent out to determine what kind of quantity of what types of grain are likely to be delivered to which silo. Now, while the weather has improved slightly this year, most farming areas are still drought-affected to some degree. Not all growers take kindly to filling in crop surveys. Some come back with anything from a few words to an essay detailing why they don't want to fill in the survey. Ata's favourite so far is the guy who wrote in red texta "No Rain - No Grain" across a blank survey form. The most inexplicable response has been the guy who wrote "yes" beside all the types of grain he has sown (instead of filling out the number of hectares as the survey requested), with a note at the top that read: "If you tell me what the results are I'll tell you what I'd sown."
Having gotten all caught up with the backlog of crop surveys, Ata has moved on to entering changes to underwriting preferences and reviewing stale cheques - that is, cheques that have not been presented at a bank.
Now, one would imagine that growers would be keen to reap the fruits of their labour by depositing their cheques. Sure, a $30 cheque for a warehouse transfer refund might slip under the radar. But some outstanding cheques are in the thousands, and go back to last year. Ata and JN (Ata's supervisory person... well, one of them) discussed this. JN said it is not uncommon for her to get calls from growers explaining that they've been going through their files & found a cheque they haven't cashed. When asked for the date of the cheque, they say, "Oh... three years ago..."
Now, Ata herself is terrible with remembering to cash cheques. If she doesn't go to the bank immediately after receiving the cheque, Mr Ata usually offers to take it. He doesn't forget. But even Ata would take care to remember to cash $6000 or so.
JN said her favourite call was from a woman who was trying to tie up her husband's estate following his death. The widow explained that she had gone through all his papers, and discovered a number of uncashed cheques, some of which went back quite a way... in fact, five of them were particularly old - they were still made out for pounds! |
posted by Ata @ 6:40 pm  |
|
|
|
|
|
