Things I Hate

I hate doing Bert's books. He records his incomings and outgoings in a tatty little yellow notebook and uses the first writing implement that comes to hand be in pen, pencil or crayon. And did I mention that his writing is horribly illegible? Letters I can work out but numbers are awful. His 4s and his 9s are indistinguishable and his 5s and 3s aren't much better. There are difficulties with 6 and 0 as he can hardly be bothered to close his zeroes. His customers and suppliers he calls by differing names, sometimes it's their first name, sometimes it's their town and sometimes he actually uses the company name. It gets confusing. There is no ordering either. The year 2010 comes after 2004 and 2009 is followed by 2011. There are crossings out and there are arrows pointing to little notes in the margins. I despair of it all.

So I spend many torturous hours deciphering all this then I send it by email to his accountant in the form of a nice neat spreadsheet. She needs checking up on too. I sent her an email in September which she claimed not to have received and had to send again in January. She probably spends five minutes on it, sends it on to Her Majesty and charges Bertie Boy 400 for her professional services.

The world is ill-divided. Next year I must, I really must, cut her out of the loop so I can have the 400 plus notes. It can't be that hard to self-certify.