If you'll recall, I had a task of making 850+ managers attest that their employees took my training.

Apparently I have mad skillz when it comes to getting people to do my will, because as of yesterday I whittled that list of 157 stragglers down to just ONE. The lone manager from New York.

I continued calling AND emailing each person until they finally buckled and took the 1.5 minutes to take care of business. When I got down to 20 or so, I started copying their managers. I hate resorting to that, but had to.

So, the lone manager from New York was my final quest. He started getting TWO emails a day and one phone call. Always nice, of course, but letting him know that he was the only one out of 850+ people who is keeping me from getting my report to the regulators.

Finally, I got a call from him yesterday afternoon.

NY (thick New York accent): Hey, doll, you can quit hunting me down.
Me: Huh? Who is this? (thinking it was someone playing a joke on me)
NY: This is [says his name]
Me: OHHHHHHHHH! The straggler!
NY: Is that what you're calling me?
Me: Yup. In fact I was just talking about you five minutes ago, saying that I was going to have to break some knee caps.
NY: (Hearty laugh)
NY: You can call off the mobsters, doll, I'm going to take care of this right now.
Me: That's fabulous, now I can get my report off to the regulators. You were the only one left.
NY: You mean, every other manager did this? I thought you were making that up in the email to get me off my keester.
Me: Nope. I'm in compliance- I don't lie (ha ha- yeah, right)
NY: Well, doll, I'm sorry I was the hang-up.
Me: So, do you think I could make it as a collector? I mean, I really did hound you.
NY: I'm afraid you are too sweet sounding. You'll have to rough up your voice and quit being so nice. But you have potential.

The rest of the conversation was joking about what a loser he was in holding up my report to the regulators, but he was awfully fun to talk to. I had quite a picture in my head of what he looked like.

It's been a while since I've been called "doll" in the business world- but for some reason I didn't mind it. It was a perfect ending to this project.

Funny thing is, I start it all over again next week with a new set of annual regulatory training. I like to come up with themes for my training, and I think my NY friend gave me an idea.... stay tuned.