Cooking the Books

We’re going to use a baking analogy now in order to accurately depict my last three hours at work. It’s not because I have an particular affinity or talent in the kitchen to produce well-crafted dessert – on the contrary, I once made a Black Forest Cake that took 11 hours and I nearly suffocated on powdered sugar inhalation – but rather, because the numbers and calculations of what I do all day aren’t very exciting. Not even, “Hey, Everybody Loves Raymond is on!!” exciting. Yeah. Dull.

Let’s say you baked a cake for a special occasion. Sure, you could have gone to Wegman’s like any other time-pressed schlock with 22 bucks in your pocket, but you wanted to make this really special. Because you may want to teach someone your methods you decide to video the whole cake baking process. That way, you have a well-documented video that can either become useful for future cake-baking protégés, or at the least, You Tube fodder.

And let me just say, you had no idea baking a cake could take so damn long. There’s a lot of specific details and measurements and protocol to follow, but people are counting on you to come through with this cake. But it’s not like you’re going to be judged on your creativity artistry. Instead, it’s how close you stick to the foolproof recipe that will determine your ultimate success. You follow every step to absolute precision. You measure thrice, pour once. There’s no way you’re screwing this up.

After all your hard work and 45 minutes at 350 degrees, your creation looks beautiful. You don’t say much at dinner because you want to get to the consumption of said cake. Everyone else catches up and it’s time for the great reveal of your delectable hard work. Everyone congratulates you on how excellent your presentation looks and how excited they are to have a forkful. At last, the first bite is upon you! You reach down, cut off a small slice and take a chomp.

It tastes like feet.

What the hell? There’s no way this cake should taste like feet. Not only were you precise in your measurements and accurate in your ingredients, you kept the cleanliness of your workspace with stainless integrity. What went wrong? Your dinner guests are spending time coming up with excuses as to why they are no longer devouring the cake, and you are sitting there aghast. But then you remember one thing.

The videotape!

A careful review of procedure will surely reveal what the hell went wrong. After everyone leaves for the evening, (5:00), you connect your camcorder to the TV and relive your painful afternoon minute by minute. Just as you guessed, you’re a freakin’ perfectionist. You did everything right. Ingredients were added in the correct order, the correct baking utensils were utilized, and hell, your rendition of “Whistle While You Cook” remained completely on-key. There’s only another couple steps on the tape before you put in the oven. You’re just about to give up and grab a Twinkie from the pantry.

And them you see it.

Inexplicably, (and coincidentally when you were grabbing a Twinkie from the pantry earlier), your co-worker—um, I mean – roommate comes into the kitchen and sees you’ve been working on a cake. He decides to help, because well, he’s a helpful kind of guy.

He adds sausage to the batter.

That explains everything.

Moral of the story: Make your spreadsheets READ ONLY. Otherwise, you can lose complete control of a financial reporting masterpiece.