Around the turn of the century, I got a job in accounts payable for a major regional bank. It was delightfully low-tech; we’d process paper invoices (for the most part) and our batches would issue payments via printed checks that would be mailed out the following morning. It was kind of stiff and stuffy, and once or twice I drew unwelcome attention by not knowing that a $800 liquor bill for a particular cost center was just business as usual and I shouldn’t question it.
We had a pretty simple procedure to make sure we didn’t fuck anything up. We’d grab a stack of invoices out of the folders sorted by date received, and we’d take them to our desk. There was a single incrementing stamp that we’d then use to stamp each invoice or bill with a seven-digit document number. Then we’d run an adding machine tape total for the batch, getting a count of exactly how much money the bills totaled up to. Only then would we enter the invoices into the computer for processing and payment. Once we entered each invoice into the system, it would provide us with a batch total, and we’d compare that to the adding machine tape to verify that the totals matched, and we hadn’t underpaid or overpaid anything.
Sounds simple, right? It was child’s play and I never had any issues with it. However, I had a coworker or two who weren’t that adept with numbers. And one afternoon, well, one of them fucked up in a truly astonishing way.
So, when she entered the batch into the system, there was one bill buried about halfway down, a hotel bill for about $700. A pretty regular thing we’d run into, executives were always traveling and schmoozing. Well, somehow, instead of paying the amount on the bill…
She paid the seven-digit document number.
So instead of telling the computer to pay this hotel $700-ish, she told the computer to pay the hotel six and a half million dollars.
Now, if she’d done the adding machine tape beforehand, it should have been easy to catch this. “Huh, my total should be $4,700, and it’s more than six million dollars, I’m a bit off.” Or even if she didn’t do the comparison, the mere fact that the batch total in the computer was $6.5 million should’ve been a dead fucking giveaway that something was wrong. It was astonishingly rare we got any individual bill that was over a grand or two, so seeing $6.5 million on the screen should’ve raised some alarm bells.
But she sent the batch through and went on to the next stack.
First and foremost, let me say the check never left the building. We had a team of women who handled the printing and the mailing of the payments, and they knew how to do their jobs. One of them saw this bonkers-ass check and the balloon went up.
But the accounts payable system was partly automated. The bank kept a comfortable amount in the AP account to handle the expected outlay each month, but all of a sudden the computer realized it was about to come up short. Way short. So, it did what it was programmed to do, and started transferring funds to cover the balance. When it couldn’t manage to cover the full amount, it started selling off assets until it had enough in the account to pay the check.
I came in the next morning to see my department full of suits and my boss in a very heated discussion.
The truly insane thing? The girl kept her job. She was still there when I moved on months later.
This bank was also where I saw one of my favorite examples of the English language. One day we went into a conference room for a meeting, and an overhead projector was sitting on the conference table. It was out of order, with a paper taped across the illuminating surface. On the paper, in a very loosey-goosey hand and in block capitals, was written the following:
“BURNT SLAP UP. DON’T BELIEVE ME, MASH THE BUTTON AND SEE.”
You and Oscar Wilde, my anonymous friend. You and Oscar Wilde.