Tweedle Dee

People make mistakes. Happens all the time. But, in a job where you’re dealing with numbers and deadlines then pretty much the whole basis for success is making as few mistakes as possible. We’re talking addition and subtraction and multiplication.

The funds I work on pay interest, usually monthly. Out system calculates what we should be paid, then, we compare that number to what we were actually paid. When there’s a difference it’s my job to figure out why and what, if anything, needs adjustment. The calculation is pretty basic: Daily interest = number of shares * rate / 365 days. And we have calculators.

So really, the job comes down to making sure you punch in the right number on this machine that does all the work for you.

I’m sure people make mistakes. Typing “742.00” instead of “472.00,” that’s reversing digits. But, the nice thing about math in the base-10 system is that if you reverse digits in addition the difference between the correct answer, and your incorrect answer will be divisible by nine.

Try it:  One hundred forty-five minus seventy-eight
145 – 78 = 67
If you’d inadvertently reversed the one and the four you’d get:
415 – 78 = 337
Common sense would tell you three hundred something is too high an answer, and check this out:
337 - 67 = 270  which is divisible by nine. Cute, huh?

Anyway. Anyone who graduated seventh grade should be able to handle these calculations, even you public school kids. After two days here you’d be picking up mistakes if they were hundreds of thousands of dollars off, after a week you’d be good enough to spot them down to a ten thousandth of a percent. (That’s 0.01124578 vs. 0.01125478)

So here is an email I just got from the stupid new guy (the other stupid new guy) who took over for the pretty girl on the other side of the floor:

From: Tweedle Dee
To: Me
Subject: Just a few small adjustments

Treasury Fund
Rogers County Tri Party Repo
Expected             Paid                   Difference      Reason
330,916.67  330500.00   916.67   Rogers Tri Party

Thanks,
Zach

Can you spot the mistake?

A college graduate. With a calculator. For crying out loud. He is as dumb as a rock. And the other one is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
I hate the new guys. Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Bag o’ hammers.

argh.

-tgme