Bitter Waters by Gennady M. Andreev-Khomiakov

Author:Gennady M. Andreev-Khomiakov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 2011-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

Tricks of Bookkeeping

To all appearances, Soviet accounting is extremely finespun. But as they say, where something is thin, that’s where it will break. At each year’s end, an inventory is taken—a full count of all tools, instruments, and materials. The data of the inventories is compared with the balances on the books, which invariably reveals huge discrepancies. The accounting department is perplexed. Where do the surpluses and shortages come from if the count was done carefully? This detail must be cleared up, that one erased or concealed; somehow, the differences must be smoothed over.

I remember how riled up our chief bookkeeper once got over one such discrepancy. It was no joke: According to the inventory, our raw materials showed a surplus of almost 1,500 cubic meters of logs, valued at approximately 300,000 rubles. That high a quantity and value are hard to conceal, and they made the flaws in our accounting painfully apparent.

Neposedov was taken by surprise, too. How could we have such a large surplus? Where had it come from? We didn’t have that much raw material, almost every log was accounted for, but there was that 1,500 cubic meters! A miracle!

We checked, and found no miracle—but did find a simple explanation. For a number of years, raw material stocks had not actually been counted; but to preserve appearances, inventory records were still composed according to data on the books. In this way, over the course of five or six years, a surplus had accumulated. Actually, 200—300 cubic yard surpluses per year were quite common, in my experience.

Even as a child I had seen how log examiners in sawmills cheated their suppliers. Logs come down on the conveyor belt one right after the other. Without stopping the belt, the examiner would quickly place an arshin-ruler, along with his finger, on the top of a log. Almost imperceptibly, he would move the ruler inward from the edge of the log with his finger and thus underestimate its diameter, sometimes by almost an inch. The supplier often did not notice, and afterward the examiner would receive his reward from the owner.

I was not surprised to encounter the same tricks in our plant during the intake and measurement of logs from the People’s Commissariat of Forestry, although perhaps I should have been. After all, our examiners were youths of about 18—20 years, educated under the socialist system. They could accept no gratuities, so they had nothing to gain by cheating the suppliers. Whence, then, this throwback to bygone days, this habit that seemed to be as deeply ingrained in them as it had been in their fathers and grandfathers? The technique they used was exactly the same, that strategic placement of the finger. I concluded that there was only one possible explanation: For the examiner, cheating is simply a sport, a chance to flaunt one’s skill and bravado. In addition, the examiners were loyal above all to their own factories, compelled by a traditional instinct of ownership: The factory where I work is mine.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.