The Frustrated CFO's Preface:
From time to time I feel a need to come back to the discussion of an emotional burden carried by the accountants who find themselves in the unfortunate position of recognizing and reporting business losses. And I feel absolutely justified doing so, because it is one of the most painful professional experiences. Moreover, it is a reality many small-business CFOs and Controllers have to face with a persistent regularity. Less than three months ago, for example, I wrote about the effect of losses on bosses (upon closing of the second quarter by the companies with a calendar fiscal year). Nobody ever mentions how hard it is for us to be the messengers of news that may translate into budget cuts, layoffs, credit line recalls, and possible termination of business. So, I feel obligated to talk about it.
Imagine my surprise, when I discovered a depiction of the familiar sentiments in a Booker Prize winning novel about one woman's wasted life - Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. I don't know whether Ms. Atwood is acquainted with somebody who shared their experiences with her, or she is that good at getting inside her characters' heads and imagining how it would feel to someone in real life. What matters is that it's very accurate. So, here it is:
"Two and two made four... But what if you didn't have two and two? Then things wouldn't add up. And they didn't add up, I couldn't get them to; I couldn't get the red numbers in the... books to turn black. This worried me horribly: it was as if it were my own personal fault. When I closed my eyes at night I could see the numbers on the page before me, laid out in rows on my square oak desk... - those rows of red numbers like so many mechanical caterpillars, munching away at what was left of the money. When what you could manage to sell a thing for was less than what it paid you to make it... - this was how the numbers behaved. It was bad behaviour - without love, without justice, without mercy - but what could you expect? The numbers were only numbers. They had no choice in the matter."
Anchor Books edition, 2000, p. 204
