Centocor = holiday deadbeats

Centocor, a dysfunctional division of Johnson & Johnson (the fuckers who sued the American Red Cross for using a red cross, beyond all parody), are stiffing me on payment after I did a holiday party quiz for them two weeks ago.

UPDATES:

After or instead of reading this, read the resolution.

1) The claim now is that I should be getting a check on Friday, December 19 via FedEx. Let's see if it happens. Note that this means that I never needed to submit another invoice nor fill out a W-9, and any claims to the contrary have been obstructionist. I could have had a check cut all along a couple of weeks ago, and people chose not to do so.

2) Apparently this post has been picked up on the Cafepharma message boards, and at least one employee in Hopewell, New Jersey has been Googling my name to find this. My message to the company: now that I FINALLY have your attention, where's my check?

3) Looking into things, no W-9 would be required of me because the amount is under $600. This is a totally spurious claim.

4) I removed the link to PA code as it referenced wages and not contracts. Centocor is actually in violation of contract law.

I took a photo of the winning team and was planning to post that and scores here. Now that just ain't gonna happen. And why, you ask, if you're a Centocor employee visiting the blog, looking for a photo? Because your company friggin' stiffed me.

We had a verbal and written agreement that I would receive a check in hand for the quiz at the event I did for them at a restaurant. No check at event. There was a silly claim that because they couldn't print my Word doc invoice the way they'd like, my invoice was "not valid" and therefore, somehow, I didn't merit a check for work already completed. Incidentally, the claim at the time - I was told I was not getting a check while doing the program, in between rounds, by the by - was that people enjoyed the event itself. We're just dicking me around at this point because they're a corporation, and I'm one guy, and I suppose they figure might makes right. Well, these people are trying to fuck the wrong guy.

I told my public relations contact there last week that my next step if no check were forthcoming was to go public and go negative. This is Portion A of that process. Portion B is getting the word out via other, more popular websites. I don't think that should be difficult. This public shaming will continue until I get my check. If you're reading this and love to pile it on wrongdoing corporations, please feel free to send this link out and post links to it. The more the merrier.

Centocor wanted me, in the week after I should have deposited their check, to reproduce an invoice, in a different format using software I have repeatedly told them I don't have, in order to get paid. I have had over 40 email and phone exchanges with a variety of employees, most rude, a couple helpful (including one who literally laughed at how unjust her own company was being, stating "none of this should be [my] problem"), to try and get my lousy, piddling 3-figure check. I have now done far more work trying to get paid than I did in order to present the program.

Last Friday, after five aggravating days of fighting phone trees and in-company bureaucracy, I was told via an email from human resources that I should get a check in the mail on or about December 17. Today my public relations contact at the company told me on the phone in a call he initiated that that is not what is happening. The latest excuse that I "can't" get paid is that they now want me to fill out a W-9 form, a brand new demand that as late as this past Friday was not being made, and had not been brought up from when I was contacted to do the quiz months ago until today.

I always love the use of the word "can't" in an organization when someone chooses to do the wrong thing. See also Nuremburg defense. And note also the result of its use.

I know they can pay me; they choose to use company rules they select as they go along for not doing so.

No one contracting me to do a program - not even the law firms I've done quizzes for - has demanded this before, for the simple reason that I am not an employee of any sort of Centocor, or of any other quiz host. I am not really even a normal contractor or sub-contractor, I did a one-off program and we agreed on payment arrangements, based in doing the work and in an invoice they accepted from me weeks ago, on two separate occasions now (the second after Centocor unilaterally violated the first). Usually an organization pays me out of petty cash or the like; this is the party budget here, I'm not an accounting temp or the like.

I've made it very clear that Pennsylvania law states that I'm owed this money, and no amount of post-quiz mid-level-management office petty tyrant jiggerypokery un-makes their debt to me. I just want my damn money. The next step is I sue in Small Claims Court, with damages and costs, and win.

Centocor, one may learn through the information superduperhighway, is a bunch of morally challenged mother-stabbers and father-rapers. The public should avoid doing business with them and avoid their products. To wit:

- Apparently Centocor's anti-arthritis medication Remicade jacks up your chances of fatal cancer, "significant blood abnormalities ", and can even lead to latent TB kicking your immune system's ass. (In fairness to the company, the joint pain melts away in the cold grasp of death.)

- There is an unfortunately underutilized blog called CentocorGossip that people locating this post who may work for the Unholy Machine may use to bring it down from the inside. Please do so. The lone post on there thus far contains the ever-popular combination of medical malpractice, unlawful firings and the magic words "strip club." Ha! I love you, Internet, and your internal dirt cornucopia!

- Even better is the bitter harvest of employee rants in the Cafepharma anonymous Centocor employee message boards. Juicy! Hopefully this post leads more employees right to it, where the internal workings of pissed off workers can do to the management of Centocor what Remicade does to you. Thrill to employee accusations of fraud and illegal mismanagement! Meet such lovely Centocor employees as "Patty Patty Puke Puke," the "Virginia Beach Nazi!" Find out which pharm sales rep is a "middle-aged hag" whose "husband doesn't love her anymore!" Learn which department is "useless!"

These are the people making your medicine - what could possibly go wrong?

This is post #1 of the Centocor posts in my attempt to get paid, which will be updated. I'm sure vast amounts of dirt on Centocor can be dug up easily, and this is what will be happening on this blog until the damn check clears. In the long run, it would have been much easier to cut me a check.

Pay me, Centocor! And pay me fast! Justice delayed is justice denied.