RECORD STORE TALES #1072: Check My Math?

A re-telling of #706:  Additional Complaint

Do you ever spend so much time looking at numbers that you start to go bug-eyed?

In the Record Store Days, my entire tenure there from 1994 to 2006, all the in-store bookkeeping was done manually on paper.  The last bunch of years there, we even had Microsoft Excel, but had to balance our books manually.  The books themselves were these big blue ledgers with green pages.  We tediously wrote down the purchases and sales on the pages, totalling up the weeks, and ultimately the month.

Sometimes balancing the books at the end of the month was straightforward and easy.  Other times, it was a case of adding up the same column again and again.  Usually a manual calculator, it seemed on a bad day, my fat fingers always inputting a number wrong.  I could add up the same column a dozen times before adding it correctly.  Is it just me?  Or is adding up one big tall column of hand-written numbers with a calculator sometimes a tedious task?  Please answer yes, because this whole story will end up like egg on my face if that premise is wrong.

Sometimes it was easy to find the error.  I’d look at the difference between my total and the number I was trying to balance with, and try to find that somewhere.  Sometimes it was as simple as mistaking a handwritten 4 for a 9, or writing down the same number twice on two consecutive rows by mistake.  It happens, but I was really good at find discrepancies.  I daresay I was better at it than most, but some days I was just baffled and could not get those damn month-end numbers to balance.

On one, and only one occasion, I gave up and asked for help.

I was working one afternoon in the late 90s with a part-timer when I flat gave up.  Tired of adding up the same column of numbers over and over again, I asked him to check my math.  There was nothing in that book he wasn’t allowed to see.  He saw the numbers at cash-out every night, and the weekly totals were written out as we tried to beat that week’s sales from the previous year.  There was nothing in that book he didn’t see in his daily job.

“Could you do me a favour?  Every time I add up this column, I get a different number.  My eyes are sore just looking at it.  Can you add it up and see what number you get?”

He said sure and started adding.

It was then that the boss known as the Bully walked into the store.  Just my luck.

“Is he doing your books for you!?” she accused with mouth agape.

“No, he…” I began.

“MIKE.  YOU CAN’T ASK YOUR PART TIMERS TO DO THE BOOKS FOR YOU!  THAT IS NOT THEIR JOB!”

“I know that, I just…”

“IF I TELL JOHN ABOUT THIS HE WILL FLIP OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?”

“No, I’m doing the books, I just needed…”

“THAT’S BULL!  I SAW HIM DOING THE BOOKS WITH MY OWN EYES!”

“No, he’s just adding up one column for me that…”

“NO ADDING ANYTHING!  YOU ARE NOT TO ASK YOUR PART TIMERS TO DO THE BOOKS FOR YOU!  THEY ARE NOT YOUR PERSONAL SERVANTS! THAT IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!”

“OK but that’s…”

“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!”  And off she stormed into the offer in the back.  It was on my annual performance review.

And some people wondered why I quit that place.