Unaccountable

All was silent in the Halls of the Damned, when suddenly :

The Boss : "FUCK!"

Here's me : "What?"

The Boss : "BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD! God forgive me!"

Here's me : "God doesn't care. What's the problem?"

The Boss, screeching in her sudden panic : "I haven't sent off the accounts!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "They were supposed to be with the accountants for yesterday latest!"

Here's me : "Oh."

The Boss : "Can you send them for me?"

Here's me : "Yes. What do you want me to send?"

The Boss : "November 09!"

Here's me : "Just November?"

The Boss, as if I'm stupid : "No, November through to October!"

Here's me, staring at her, eyebrow raised.

The Boss : "WHAT'S THE PROBLEM!?!?"

Here's me, veerrrry sloooowly : "You just said 'November through to October'. November 09 to October... what. Try again."

The Boss : "No, November before! A fullancial year! And I have to go early! I have a dentist's appointment!"

Here's me, ignoring that little pormanteau : "OK. Do you have their address handy, I'll post it to them tonight?"

By 'post it' I refer to posting one of the A4 hardbacked ledgers which I have previously mentioned constitutes our accounts system (along with the pencil and my still-missing shiny new fucking rubber)

The Boss : "You'll have to scan it!"

Sigh.

Here's me : "You want me to scan this whole book?"

The Boss : "YOU HAVE TO!"

Here's me : "If I scan this whole thing it'll be an e-mail the size of Manchester."

The Boss : "JUST DO IT!"

Here's me : "Gah. Give it here."

So I take it, and step up to the plate, and start tinkering with the much-hacked photocopier/scanner device. The book when opened is two sides of A4, naturally I want to set this on the scanner and just scan an A3 sized document each time, yeah? So I'm just checking this is all lining up correctly and so on, running a couple of test copies to check I'm scanning the appropriate area and such...


The Boss is outraged.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING PLAYING WITH THAT THING!"

Here's me, sadly shaking my head : "Never mind."

The Boss : "START SCANNING THEM!"

Here's me, still calm but only just : "Calm. Down. I am spending a couple of minutes setting this up in order to save about half an hour. Just leave me to it."

The Boss is momentarily placated. So I'm standing there at the scanner/photocopier thing, putting a hardback book on it and scanning each page, lifting it, turning the page, repeating this process, and generally wondering just where the fuck my fucking life started to go so badly wrong and thinking it was probably that time me and a friend drink a bottle of his mother's Bacardi one night when we were fourteen.

a reconstruction of the crime scene, for the reader's perusal

So, I race on through this process, and stop briefly to remove the few test copies I did from underneath, which I then drop into The Boss's bin, which regular readers shall know is just beside the copier. 


Mistake.


The Boss was previously merely "outraged", now it is fair to say she is fucking apoplectic.

"YOU CAN'T JUST PUT THOSE IN THE BIN THOSE ARE OUR ACCOUNTS!", she actually fucking yells at me, then reaches into the bin, pulls out the papers I have just deposited there, makes a great show of ripping them up and then actually fucking throws them down the side of the fucking bin.

not a reconstruction. actual scene. FML.

I'm pretty sure my mouth is hanging open and my fists are clenching in a manner that would make most people quietly walk away, there very well may be steam coming out of my ears actually.

The Boss's life and my employment here are both saved by the phone ringing. I return to my desk and froth quietly, and The Boss starts shouting inanities down the phone. The call ends a moment later when she slams the phone down.

"THE STUPID BASTARDS!"

I don't even look round.

"THEY'VE MOVED ME TO AN EARLIER APPOINTMENT BUT THEY PHONED DUBLIN TO TELL ME!"

Can't help myself now - "They phoned who in Dublin?"

The Boss screams our company name at me.

Here's me, once again a perfectly tranquil mask of calm hiding the murder that lies at the heart of me : "That is us."

The Boss : "THEY PHONED THE DUBLIN BRANCH!"

with which she seizes up her bags and runs to the door, leaving me now a bizarre mixture of confused, angry and amused. Not least because we don't have a Dublin branch.








EPILOGUE :

About ten minutes after leaving The Boss phoned me and, very bright, breezy and cheerful, said "I thought I'd just to give you something to do while I was away!" and proceeded to give me instructions on something she needs done which would make a funny entry in and of itself but I'm too utterly fucking pissed off to go there right now.


If you're looking for me, I'll be in the office here, kicking the shit out of everything in sight and screaming myself hoarse.