The Higher You Go The Less You Know

My new and rather shakey fall from Management Material to an Exec. Ass has not been without it's dramas. Besides my unpredictable pre-menopausal anxieties and loss of memory, I'm learning a whole new craft. It's something I've done before but a lot has changed in 5 years. Legislation and the rules are different, websites have replaced customer service lines as sources of information and ferreting through sites to find the appropriate information takes forever, on- line trading is now done instead of sending client letters to fund managers and that means the responsibility has increased 10 fold for the lower-downs, the administrative staff (most of whom by the way earn a pittance, I was lucky to retain my salary due to my Marketing expertise). I've made a mistake this month. Only one and to a really nice but rather neurotic client but Murphy's Law being what it is, what can go wrong, has gone wrong.

All he wanted to do was transfer some shares from his personal name into his Self Managed Super Fund name. Simple, fill in a form, send to the share registry - done like a dogs dinner. The catch being, this client is travelling overseas next week and wanted it all 'bedded' down before he left. He's fastidious you see. Wants all his ducks in a row. First mistake, I forgot about the urgency and the transfers sat on my desk for 5 days, I blame my current hormonal state for that and I was wrong to let them languish there - responsibility accepted and apologised for. Then, I sent them to the appropriate share registry. . . but low . . .he has a broker so the Share Registry refused to do the transfer. Apparently, if you have a HIN, then you must deal through your broker - if you have a SRN then you can deal directly with the share registry. BINGO - revelation to me! Then the share registry refused point blank to tell me anything - even if they'd received the forms because I wasn't the 'authorised person'. It wasn't until I promised to slit my wrists and send a personal suicide note to them explaining why I did it and that they would be totally responsible for the blood on the walls. Then, they said they'd have to send the forms back to the client. Ahhhhhhggggghhh Noooooooo. Just when I thought I could salvage the situation and keep it seamless by sending them on to his broker and he'd know nothing about this indescretion - my false security bubble was burst. Bugga. So, now I've had to send new forms to a soon-to-depart-nice-guy-gone-bad who thinks I'm a complete imbecile (he's not alone there!)

After that rant, the problem is, I have NEVER done this before. I sought the guidance of another Exec Ass and TheBoss, who both fed me a bum steer. The other ExecAss gave me misinformation and TheBoss well he simply didn't know what to do . . . it seems the higher you go, the less you need to know. Which is fair 'nuff, he does other stuff but leaves me between a rock and a hard place. After being a higher up . . . I'm learning all about the stress and strain of being a lower-down. . . . Ah . . . I shall remain philosophical. I know I can do it, I'm just on a learning curve and not getting a load of assistance from my peers I might add! It might not be spiking rubbish for the council but there's a lot of shit flying around our office at the moment and a lot of it's aimed at me!

*wipes chip off shoulder*