Confessions of a Genius Co-worker

One of the things I am responsible for in work is our sales taxes. How much we owe, how much we can claim as a refund. I have three different sets to calculate, one of which is always very small and relates to what tiny amounts of work we do in Quebec.

It isn’t good accounting practice for the person calculating the taxes to also file the tax return. So, once I’ve finished the calculations and reconciliations, I go to our bank’s tax filing website, and enter all the information that I calculated, as if I was actually filing a return. Then I print out a copy of the page and exit without saving anything.

After my boss signs his approval of the page, I give it to Connie. It is her job to copy the numbers I have given her into the boxes on the same website. She is basically re-doing the same things I have done, with an identical piece of paper to the page on her screen as a guide, and then hitting ‘save’.

Excluding dates, there are five boxes in which she can enter numbers. Five sets of numbers. Sometimes all of the numbers in the boxes are zero. Last month there was one box that did not have a zero in it. One box out of five. One box that she needed to enter a number into, leaving all the rest at zero. 

Somehow, she still managed to fuck it up.

As a result of this error, instead of receiving a refund from the tax people, I have an angry letter asking why our numbers don’t add up. Now I’m going to have to piss about explaining why and submit an amendment request.

The best part? She the same thing two months earlier. We got audited as a result.

Connie is back, and she’s got Coldplay.

Connie: “Hey, we have the same type of cellphone, right? Is yours working okay?”

Me: [checks] “Yes, why?”

Connie: “Hmm, mine isn’t working.”

Me: “For how long?”

Connie: “Since I spilled a cup of coffee on it.”

…

Connie was telling me that she’d emailed all her friends to ask their telephone numbers because her phone had broken, but nobody had responded yet, and she was panicking. She showed me the email. She’d sent it to her own address and no others.

…

Connie: “The thing with language is that there are more and more words and then you have a lot of cinnamons.”

…

Connie: “Kids these days can’t spell and they can’t add up because of computers and phones. Our brains are so big but we only use 1% of them. I probably only use a quarter of that.”

It’s a busy time right now. My company has to prepare the half-year report for our parent company next week, so all our deadlines have moved forward by at least two days. Everyone is in a rushed panic.

As a result, we got a notice today that our weekly half-hour department meeting had been cancelled.

“Hey,” Connie shouted over the cubicle wall separating us, “looks like the meeting’s cancelled because of the month end deadlines!” I murmured my agreement. She went on: “That’s really good news. I’m totally running against the clock here. It’s madness. It’s crazy. I’m totally rushed.”

Connie then went out for coffee with a friend. She came back an hour later.

Yes, Connie, and if you get locked out of your apartment you should call the company who makes your safety deposit box.

Connie was forced to update to Office 2007 the other week and so now it’s pretty much my full-time job to help her find the Print Preview button.