...Seeing the Accounting Books come alive!!!!
...
As I have previously reported, I was the CFO of a large vertically organized construction conglomerate that had a dozen inter-related corporations in it. The President/Owner was a bit of a character, he thought that it would be best to have separate companies that did their special tasks. So, we had Labor Companies that would bid on jobs, and perform the work. Then, we had companies that owned and maintained the construction equipment; others bought and stored asphalt; others mined gravel and sand; and others crushed the gravel and made asphaltic concrete; and others had trucks that delivered the materials. The companies would buy and sell materials between each other.
So, for we bean counters, it was a HORRIBLE CHALLENGE!!! We had to make sure that the companies all recorded their transactions the same way. If company A billed company B $1,000 for gravel, both sides had to record the same transaction. If company B didn't record the purchase, our books would be out of balance, and we had to track down what had happened. At first, when I found such a problem, I spoke to the Managers to find out what had happened. That usually resulted in me getting in the middle of a dispute over whether the materials had been the ordered amount, or the right materials...
...(I solved the problem after a year of pulling out my hair in frustration. I just adjusted the books to reflect what the billing company had recorded, and didn't tell the other manager what I had done. They never looked at the details of the official accounting records, so all was FINE!
)
I would travel to all of the companies a few times a year...mainly to justify why I merited a company MERCEDES BENZ...(I LOVED the Benz!) And liked pulling into a company parking lot in it.
One time, I needed to be at a gravel mining and crushing plant for 2 days. The books were horribly out of balance, so I had to fix them, and then work with the accounting staff to make sure that they processed all of the paperwork properly. I finished around noon the second day, and left the office. I drove into Reno, and bought items to make a nice picnic lunch...plus a bottle of wine...and drove back to the facility. I parked on the far edge, under some trees, and had a leisurely afternoon as I ate the food, and drank the wine...and watched the plant operate...
That was fun, seeing the loaders scooping up rock from where it had been blasted from a mound and placing it into large dump trucks. The trucks would dump the raw rock by the crushing plant, and other loaders would load it into hoppers that placed the rock on conveyor belts. The rock would be run through mesh screens, and into rock crushers, and then the plant would sort the final product into different sizes of gravel and sand, and then dump it into separate cone-shaped piles.
I sat on a folding chair as I watched, and my mind was placing numbers on what was going on...costs of equipment, labor, water to rinse the product and such expenses.
Back in the office, when I looked at the financial records, they were much more than just numbers to me.
...
I tried to get a Manager to take me out to a road paving site so I could see how they built roads, but he refused!
..."You would just be a distraction and probably get in the way" I was told...
(I was cute back then, and had my OWN PURE WHITE CONSTRUCTION HELMET!!! The type that Foremen wear that have a bill...not the round things that the actual workers wear.)
Once, I was inventorying the piles of gravel, and a 980 Loader kept coming over to wherever I was. I would just quickly make a measurement...using the 'thumb held at arms length' technique...a VERY refined method that only the truly trained and talented can accurately use...and scamper away.
I suspect that the Plant Manager was telling the operator...
..."Get that DAMN BITCH out of MY PLANT!"
