So let's say your employer hasn't paid you in three months, you've maxed out the credit cards, and you're begging the banker for a break on the mortgage. But the colleague who sits next to you is a gold mine, with the company accidentally overpaying him by thousands of dollars while you're eating saltines for dinner.
Winter turns to spring, summer gives way to fall, and not only is the payroll system still in chaos, but your dunderheaded bosses don't have the slightest clue how to fix the problem.
This, my friends, is the reality of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which screwed up 30,000 paychecks in June alone. Remember the movie "Groundhog Day," in which Bill Murray wakes up each morning to the same routine, as if time is standing still? That's the story here, too, except that it's a horror movie rather than a romantic romp, and none of the main characters is as smart as the groundhog.
Eight months after switching to a new $95-million accounting and payroll system, the cost of trying to fix it and move on is expected to run an additional $50 million. Last week the school board approved a request by Supt. David L. Brewer to spend $10 million on yet another consultant.
Wait! Don't write that check.
I'll be the consultant for $5 million.
Or, I'd be happy to be the independent monitor the board wants to hire to watch over the new consultant.
So what if I don't have any idea what I'm doing? Twelve monkeys with an abacus and a clipboard could have done a better job than the people who've had a hand in this debacle. And I'm relatively cheap.
I'm still working out the fine points of a better system, but I'd probably hire day laborers so I could use the carpool lanes and whip around to every school with a calculator and a checkbook. Better yet, I could just go to district headquarters, as I did Monday, and mediate for the army of pathetic souls who hunch there in desperation, begging the district to get their pay right.
Christine, who teaches at Frank Del Olmo Elementary, said she comes once a week to try to convince the district she was not overpaid by $17,000.
Mary Alba said she started teaching history at Vista Middle School Aug. 19 but got paid only for working three days that month.
It was Dianne Reyes, a second-grade teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary, who took the daily prize for most sympathetic victim. While undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, and continuing to teach, she's made five trips to headquarters trying to find out why she had missed several paychecks, one time spending nine and a half hours.
