Laptops

I'm right in the middle of my annual audit and am not at all happy. The source of my frustration is nothing to do with my books, records or accounts, but the attitude the auditors have towards trees!!! I have a company wide network of PC's and on it I run professional accounting software. I do all of my work using it, and often extract data into spreadsheets for further analysis. At home I have a business grade PC with a remote link to my office network. So whether I'm working in the office or at home, everything I do is computerised - so yeh, I have square eyes. lol.

The auditors arrived Monday morning, each with their own laptop slung sexily over their shoulder. They make themselves comfortable in the Board Room and set up their laptops. It's at this point that I would dearly love to hand over a memory stick containing the accounts together with all of the working papers, spreadsheets and schedules. I have it all ready for them .... but no, they want it all printing out for their file.

But that's only the beginning. One at a time (there are 3 of them) they come to speak with me about whatever part of the business they are looking into at the time. They pull a chair up to my desk, open their laptop and peer accusingly over the top of the screen as they fire at me their questions, furiously typing my answers into their machines. Cool, so they're not totally unappreciative of the need to embrace modern technology .... are they? Yes, they are!!! Once they have completed the 'interrogation' the report will be printed off for their file. On one occassion, during 'questioning' I pulled up a report on my screen to show them a transaction they were interested in. "Ooh good, can I have a print of that then?", he asked excitedly. "Yes ... just that page" I replied, pretending I wanted to be helpful. "No .... the whole report". "Whaaat???" I exclaimed "but it's 63 pages and you're only interested in one item on page 57". "Sorry, but I have to have the whole report so the item can be seen in context". How #$@%$*@ ridiculous is that?

Sadly, that is the way it has been going all week. I protest and even greet them sarcastically with "Take a seat - have you come to cut down another tree?" .... "What do you do in your spare time - Oragami?". I even tried reducing paper usage by reducing the font size (too small to make notes against) and duplex printing to use both sides of the paper (not convenient for their files). I will be having a moan (which is something I'm rather good at) to the senior partners of the firm just for my own satisfaction.

And talking of computers, as if the audit isn't enough, my laptop decided to die on me a few days ago. Suddenly, inexplicably, it went off and can not be made to come back on. Though annoyed, I wasn't too upset because I am fairly disciplined with back up's and know there is nothing important on the disk that I haven't got somewhere else. I also knew the machine is only 3-years old and I took out an Extended Warranty when I bought it. However, the bad news is that the extended warranty expired in October, just a few weeks ago. I don't often swear but the air turned blue when I discovered that.

So as I approach the remaining days of the tree-hungry audit, witnessing a team of professionals spread their carbon footprint far and wide, I drop my broken laptop into the bin. It's not the greatest of weeks so far but I'm looking on the bright side ...... it will soon be the weekend and then I'll be able to do some painting. Hey-ho!!