The day I almost died

The closest I’ve ever come to a panic attack was yesterday.

I got to work a half hour early, and was checking my work emails. I had sent out a huge funding the day before, and I emailed various vendors to make sure that they received their wires. The total funding was about $2.8 million dollars- I process the funding every month. One of our properties in Miami that my company owns is undergoing a huge $86 million dollar renovation. Anyway, I cut checks for invoices that are $50K or less, and anything more than that, I do direct wires into their accounts. So, I send the checks and the wires yesterday, and I emailed the amount that I was wiring to each vendor so that they could confirm receipt and apply it to the appropriate invoices. Vendor “A” I emailed that we had wired $660K and Vendor “B” I emailed to confirm $1.2M. So here’s where my panic started...

I checked my emails yesterday morning (the day AFTER the wires had all gone out) and vendor A was telling me that they had received $1.2M, not $660K as I had emailed. As you can guess… vendor B said that they had received $660K, not $1.2M. I thought I was going to PUKE! I must have mixed up the amounts and switched them around!!! My hands started trembling so bad, I couldn’t even hold my pen. I ran to my files, and started digging to check the wire request sent to the bank. This MUST have been the bank’s mistake! They must have screwed it up!! Nope. The wire I sent was identical as they were emailing me.

So now, I’m thinking, what am I supposed to DO? Ask the vendor to please send back $1.2 MILLION DOLLARS because they weren’t supposed to get it?! It was IN their account!! It could have already been spent, for all I know!! This isn’t like being short in your cash register at the 7-11 and having to pay $13.36 from your own pocket. I certainly don’t have $1.2M that I can transfer in from MY account!!

I was beyond freaking out. I was a mess.

Then, I decided to go back to my invoice spreadsheets and check the amounts that each vendor was due. OH SWEET MOTHER! WAIT!!! I DIDN’T SCREW UP THE WIRES!!!! The amounts vendor A and vendor B received were CORRECT! I had just EMAILED the wrong numbers when I asked them to confirm! I immediately started breathing again, and I emailed to tell them that my previous email had listed the wrong amount- that the funds they confirmed were actually the correct amounts we were funding them.

Wow. Can you freaking believe that mess? I was crapping my pants! (well, not literally) Crisis averted.