I belong to a food program that reimburses me at the end of each month for a portion of the money I spend on food for the kids. It’s kind of nice. I get a pretty check in the mail each month that I get to put in my bank account for feeding kids that I’d have to feed anyways. (ridiculous how much I spend on food each month by the way).
In order to belong to this exclusive club I must follow certain guidelines. The kids must eat according to the USDA food program. I must send in documentation of attendence and serve appropriate meals at the slotted times.
Easy enough.
Food lady makes drop in visits every couple months and at this last visit she mentioned that a.) parents are forgetting to sign their children in and out (bad bad parents) and b.) some of the times the parents are putting down for drop off/pick up are not coinciding for the times that I am sending to the food program.
Example:
Diego gets dropped of at 10:00 am and picked up at 5:30 pm.
At the end of the day when I record this info. into the computer I’m going off memory so I might say Diego got dropped off at 9:30 and picked up at 5:15.
Not ok. They want the numbers to be the same.
They give me a warning. (maybe two) but I’ve got a lot of crap going on around here and I’m not going to worry over some slight dicrepencies concerning attendence times for a bunch of food freaks. If Diego comes at 10:00 and I say he came at 9:00 it doesn’t really matter because either way I did NOT claim him for the breakfast meal. You follow? I didn’t cost them ANY money. The only problem is that the time I wrote down was inconsistent.
Basically they have a problem with some sloppy book keeping. If one or two kids somewhere along the way accidentally got claimed for meals they really weren’t there for then I’ll be the first to say, “Oops, that really was my bad. Please take your money back.” Sometimes those things happen. BUT. I swear to you, I really try hard to claim meals for children who are actually present during those meals. Whether Diego came at 10 am or 9 am doesn’t matter. The fact was he as there for lunch in both scenarios and that is what I claimed him for. The fact was he was NOT there for breakfast and I did NOT claim him for breakfast. So why really do they care if I write down 9 when actually it was 10??
Where is this going?
I got a very confrontational letter in the mail this weekend that is basically accusing me of false claims. They want me to make copies of attendence sheets for the past two months and send them in for evaluations. THEN they want me to send in attendence sheets every month from now until September so they can compare the ACTUAL in and out times and make sure I’m doing my job. If I choose not to comply they have threatened to black list me from all food programs in Washington state. Sheesh!!
In retaliation I’ve left a message for the program to call me asap. I want to find out exactly how they plan on punishing me for “false claims”. If the in and out times do not match up will they disqualify every meal for that day? What are they going to do when they compare the actual attendance sheets with my computer claims and see that “aha Mr. Mohawk was picked up on April 15th at 5:15, but Ms. Kathy claims he was picked up at 5:40!!” Then what? Do I not get reimbursed for the meals he ate that day?? I’m really interested to see what they plan on doing with this.
I’m also going to go back and create a list of kids I claimed for attendence of kids whose parents forgot to sign them. I have a school ager who never gets signed in and out and yet I claim her for the meals she eats. So I’m going to go back and list all the days she was here and have her mom sign each day so that I can send it in with my attendence sheets. I don’t know if it will help, but I want those food freaks to see that my parents are on my side.
No one’s gonna call me a liar and expect me to take it lying down. I take a lot of things lying down (happy drinks, naps, baby cuddles, books…you were thinking dirty there for a second were you?? Sicko.) but name calling is not one of them.
I’m totally fighting the man on this one and I’ll let you know what they plan on doing to me after I talk to them later.
Stay tuned.
——ok so I called the food lady and she was actually slightly apologetic. She claims the letter I received was from the state and apparently the state is in charge of them. She said if it were up to her the letter would be a little less alarming. Indeed.
She also said what they are going to do is compare the in and out times and make sure I didn’t claim a child for a meal that his parents say he wasn’t there for. Easy enough. I think she just didn’t want to experience the wrath that is my anger with “the man”. Whoever he is.
And maybe I kind of told her there’s a world of bloggers and one militant black man out there that have my back and all I have to do is say the word and she’d be getting thousands of angry letters from my thousands of blog friends. Because I do have thousands. I’m sure of it.
I’ll let you know how my food freak audit goes as soon as they’re finished with my paperwork…
