Two Apples...Two! Okay?!
2002-12-09 . 3:53 p.m.

As per Fletch's recent entry berating the lack of simple English language skills I am afraid I have to follow on with a diatribe against those who have no clue about elementary mathematics.

First of all lets get this clear - mathematics isn't hard. It's mostly laziness when it comes to working things out. As someone who used to have to do 30 minutes of mental arithmetic at school for about 10 years I can safely say that counting doesn't come hard to me. But what I am about to describe should beggar belief.

As you are aware, Fletch and I work for a cable company in foggy ol' England and we have to deal with the cream of the countries population when it comes to stupidity. Today I had to use primary school terms to explain a bill to a customer. I will briefly explain the issue to you guys first.

You have an account with us and there are multiple ledgers within the account (in this instance - two). One of these ledgers has a payment on it which we need to transfer to the other. A debit should be raised on one ledger and a credit on the other. This represents removal of the payment and reassigning it onto the correct ledger.

But, as happens a little too often, a credit was applied to the same ledger as the payment and a credit to the correct ledger as well. This means we, as a company, are out of pocket. This is noticed and a couple of months later we remove the 2nd credit.

All is now well in ledger-land.

Try and explain this bill to Mr Thicky McThick of Thicksville, Thickshire however and i found myself resorting to this -

Me

"You have an apple in your left hand but it needs to be in your right hand. If I move the apple from your left hand and place it in the right hand it leaves none in the left and one in the right, okay? Now, in this instance, we have added an apple in your right hand but the original apple is still in the left. This is obviously wrong as there was only one apple originally. So now, we are taking the apple from your left hand that should never have been there, okay?"

Commander Imbecile of Her Majesties Imbecile Navy

"I'm not with you..."

Me

THUD...THUD...THUD...THUD...

Commander Imbecile of Her Majesties Imbecile Navy

"Is there something wrong?"

(Sound of a stool toppling and a crack followed by noise of heavy object swinging from rope)

Since when did simple addition and subtraction become such a challenge? I understand that people may have difficulty with the more complex areas like fractions, percentages, algebra and the like but what on earth was this person doing at school? The average person spends 10 years in school. Add on another 30 years of life experience and you'd (maybe) hope they had picked up on such a simple skill.

Before anyone moans at me, I have no maths qualifications at all. I was expelled from two schools and one college and used to mess around in class like an evil clown whose sole purpose was to cause teachers to have nervous breakdowns, but I can still add 1 + 1 and then subtract 1 to get = 1. It's not the hardest thing in the world. It's not like facing down the combined might of the US Armed Forces with a plastic spoon.

Anyway, enough of the ranting. Today I am actually tired! You heard it here first. I nearly fell asleep on the train this morning and ended up in Liverpool, which could have been quite funny (in that wholly un-funny fashion). I am actually getting "slightly" annoyed with my Oracle status at work. People accost me as I walk to get a fresh coffee just to ask me stupid questions. The fact that I can reel off the telephone numbers of about fifty different departments and tell you who the best person to speak to as well means I get asked this all the time. But it's just laziness again. I have a list of contacts to get stuff done that even the Call Centre Manager is jealous of.

(The scariest thing is - my hand has muscle memory of some of these numbers. Hover it over the number pad and watch it go!)

Being tired and having people hassle you is not a recipe for fun - it's a receipe for "Turn Paul into a raving Psycopath". I sometimes find myself staring into space at work working out how I can turn everyday office tools into weapons of lethality. Hole-punchers, Staplers, Letter Openers, Shredders etc. All these are my weapons against the tie-wearing bastards who pay my meagre salary. Bastards.

Later on today (if I remember and am drunk) I shall regale you with more tales from the exciting non-stop rollercoaster ride of my life. Assuming you are above the minimum height restriction at any rate.