The Accountant's Blog by Mark Schott

by   |   Fri, Mar 17th, 2017

Chris Sapp, our resident eternal optimist, asked me to write a blog for the TuscBDD website and to make it humorous.  I looked at our budget with the revenue going down and the expenditures going up and decided there was not much humorous there.  So, I will digress into a tale from my youth when I was a 23-year old newlywed in search of a gold chain at the request of my lovely bride. 

It was 1980, and I had been married for two years.  I was earning $5.25 an hour and my wife had her hands full with two babies.  Needless to say, money was tight.

Christmas was coming and all my wife wanted was a simple, gold chain.  I knew nothing about jewelry, but even I should be able to fulfill such a simple request, I thought.  So, I went to a jewelry store at the Belden Village Mall and asked about a gold chain and the lady behind the counter brought out a beautiful example and whispered that it was only six fifty. 

Rats!  I had a ten dollar bill in my pocket and I had my heart set on a Cinnabon with extra icing and an ice-cold Mochalatta at the food court.  If I purchased this gold chain for six fifty, I would not be able to have the Cinnabon and the beverage - it would be one or the other.  Unacceptable!

Being the shrewd negotiator that I am, I asked, "Do you have something a little less expensive?  Like around four fifty?"  

Yes, she did.  It was also a beauty, but a little shorter than the other.  "This one," she said softly, "is only three ninety five." 

"Yes!  This is perfect!" I thought.  And, quite a coup in getting the gold chain and  the Cinnabon and  the Mochalatta!

And then the nice lady added the words "ninety five" a second time.  Wait, what?  Is she telling me that the gold chain in not three dollars and ninety five cents, but three hundred and ninety five dollars and ninety five cents?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The stunned look of bewilderment on my face must have given away the fact that I was the hayseed who had wandered into the big city thinking he was going to buy a 24k gold chain for $4.  With my face the color of a bright red, bulbous posterior of a baboon at the local zoo, I announced that it was certainly a lovely piece, but, I, ahem, was going to continue looking.   

I wanted to crawl out of the store, but somehow stumbled out on my own.  This was very upsetting.  Very upsetting indeed!

But, once I sat down in front of a "hot from the oven" Cinnabon with extra icing and an ice cold Mochalatta, all was well with the world once again! 

And, yes, I am the rube tending to your nine million dollar budget this year. 

- Mark Schott

Fri, Mar 17th, 2017