9 15 03

If
you have read this column for any length of time you may have
noticed that I tend to dwell upon certain subjects that are of
particular interest to me. One of those happens to be the
peculiarities of our governments.

This is going
to be one of those.

Yesterday I
opened the mail and found a certified letter from the United
States Department of Education. To make a long story short, the
gist of this letter concerned past due loan payments owed by a
former employee. The letter stated in no uncertain terms and I
quote…”The Dept of Education is entitled to seek an amount that
your firm failed to withhold as well as attorneys fees, court
costs, and punitive damages from your firm unless we receive
payment in full within 30 days of this letter. The Dept. of
Education will also seek enforcement in Federal Court.”

I called the
folks at the number listed and managed to wade through about
fifteen minutes of voice mail options which I didn’t need to
hear just to find a live human who would listen to my side of
this situation. I explained to this person that the reason we
haven’t sent any more payments as required by the previously
issued court order is because this employee quit back in June of
this year and doesn’t work here anymore.

The lady
listened to my story, but then advised me that this wasn’t
really any excuse since we should have notified them that he was
no longer employed and as such she still held us responsible for
the monies they had not received since June. I told her I didn’t
feel we had an obligation to notify the entire world when we
lose an employee in the off hand possibility that someone
outside of our company might want to know. We don’t have the
time or personnel to do this.

She didn’t
laugh or think this was funny; neither did I, and said that we
are obligated to pay the outstanding balance.

I asked her to
bear with me while I recapped our conversation.

Now, as I
understand it, this person went out and borrowed money from the
government under some student loan program, is that right?

“Yes, it is.”
she answered.

Then this
person who took out the loan and failed to repay this loan went
to work for me…is that right?

“Yes, that’s
correct.” She said.

So, then after
this person started to work for us, the Department of Education
sent us a notice that this person had not paid their loan and we
were ordered to withhold a certain amount of money each week,
cut a check for this amount and mail that check using our
materials and postage to the government, is that right?

“Yes, that’s
right.” She said.

Now, since that
person quit and no longer works here; he obviously hasn’t paid
any more on his loan since he was left, you want me to pay for
the amount he should have paid if he was still working here? Is
this correct?

“Yes, that’s
correct” she said again.

And the reason
for that would be because we did not notify you that he was no
longer an employee of this company, is that right?

“Yes, that’s
correct… the notice that he was no longer an employee had to be
in writing” she said.

By this time,
my secretary had brought me a copy of the last check we had sent
to them in June, on the memo section of the check next to his
name and social security number was the notation…”final check
this employee terminated 6/27/03”.

So when I
pointed this out to the lady on the phone and said the check had
been cashed, all she could say was…”Well I guess we didn’t read
the check.”

I then took a
moment to tell her that these checks are a real pain since the
Dept. of Education doesn’t require fixed payments for loans like
everyone else. No, they have a system that requires you to
deduct a percentage of the person’s gross income for the week.
This means that each deduction has to be calculated manually
since payroll amounts change from week to week. In other words,
it’s a lot of trouble.

I explained to
her that I thought my best option would be to just not hire
anyone who had a Dept of Education loan which needed to be
repaid if this was going to cost me money at some point in the
future.

She just hung
up without another word, goodbye or kiss my foot.