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Friday, June 1, 2012

Numbers are an ILLUSION!

People will tell you that they like working with numbers because numbers don't lie.  Well, I don't know what numbers they are working with but I assure you that numbers DO lie....or at least they are not clear, straightforward representations of the truth.  There are RULES to numbers and you have to work within the rules and even then, sometimes, the numbers are not what they seem to be. They are not a straightforward representation of the real picture. And for someone who is not a native number wrangler (and I am NOT a native number wrangler, I eye numbers very warily) the world of finance remains somewhat a mystery to me.  Oh sure, for a year and a half I have been making things work but I seldom understand how or why what I do works.  Often, I know what the desired outcome is... all I need to do is get the numbers available to represent the answer I know is expected.  It's not ALWAYS that easy, but there are times that it is and I just have to figure out what goes where in the occasion to produce the desired outcome.  I am getting a little better at being able to look at a spreadsheet and figure out what I need to fix in order to produce the desired outcome.  Sometimes I don't get it at all.  Those are the worst because then I have to go ask the boss questions and she IS a native number wrangler (no, I don't understand why someone who is good with numbers hired me to work with the numbers when there are SO many other things about the business that would suit my talents better. *sigh

That said, I stay with the job because I am still learning things and don't get yelled at too much.  I do wish sometimes that I could record interactions so that when I am told to do something a particular way and then 2 months later when I'm asked why I am doing something a certain way and, by the way, that way is all wrong, I could pull out the recording of being told to do it that way.  Oh well, every job has it's flaws, right?