I don’t often rant (well, ok, not that often) but those that know me, know that I’m pretty passionate about some things and when that passion gets focused on something, well…..
With the subject of this post you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m going to go on about corporate sleaze, stultifying policies or general incompetence (much of which, it seems, we read about on a daily basis these days) in business. Well you would be wrong: one of the worst sins in business is slow, late or even worse non-payment of bills.
The kind of bills I’m talking about are not taxes (although that is sinking pretty low), or utilities – these have a pretty direct feedback i.e. goodbye business. The kind I’m talking about are from the delivery of goods or services to companies by employees, contractors, sole traders or small businesses. Big businesses (as the creditor) in general can (or at least should) be able to handle some degree of cash flow but for a company to hold up payment to an individual is, in my book, criminal.
While I’m not going to pretend that I’m holy than thou – I’m sure that I have inadvertently made this mistake in the past – what I find unbelievable (and inexcusable) is that some companies consciously operate with this approach as their default. Do they not realize that the, quite often insignificant, payment from the company’s perspective is very often make or break “putting bread on the table” income for the individual?
We are lucky in that my company and (my wife’s for that matter) clients are really good about this – they pay on (and in most cases well before) any bill is due – one of the reasons why we see them as great clients, and another one of the reasons why we’d go to the ends of the earth for them. Unfortunately it seems that an increasing number of companies operate differently and, in my opinion, they don’t deserve to be in business. The worst part of it is that they are often big, prestigious, and well respected companies who therefore have the individuals over a barrel from the get go.
One particularly egregious example that I know of is that of a local paper (owned and directly financed by a very large multi-national) that has a domestic worker as their cleaner and tea lady (for those of you that don’t know, in South Africa this is a very low - think minimum - wage job but quite often they are still supporting their direct and sometimes even also their indirect families with this). While all other employees are paid at the end of every month, months sometimes go by where this person doesn’t get paid, for no reason! It is just crazy – how can people live with themselves knowing that they are doing this to people? Another example, which happens all too commonly is very slow payment by big companies (advertising agencies are particularly bad culprits of this, at least in my indirect experience) to individual contractors doing freelance work for them. What are they thinking? Do they think that these people have a “float” of money that they live off and this income is just “gravy”?
Well, all I can say is that I hope that these companies get what they deserve – to go out of business (fast) – or at least the short-sighted policy-makers in these companies get hoofed out on their asses (ideally to then operate as freelancers so they can experience the pain firsthand).
