No. If I lied on reports, things didn’t balance. (Double entry accounting is good like that.) When I first started on reception, they used me to look over the reports to make sure everything balanced and numbers didn’t post to wrong accounts. I knew enough about annual accounts to know when something looked wrong and out of place. This was early days of software accounting programmes when the firm was transferring over from typed accounts built from hand written ledgers and spreadsheets to a DOS-based software program everyone in the firm was getting used to using, even the older secretaries with no computer training or experience at all.
We occasionally created reports with hopeful sales projections when it came to getting finance help from banks and the like for a client’s new, potential enterprise, but I wouldn’t call that lying. I always felt more confident creating projections based on production/sales figures from previous 5 years accounts. They weren’t for the bank for new enterprises, though. Those were always reports for the board of directors to show them the 5 year track their company was on. They could use the realistic figures to see if they had to hire another distribution driver, or put more effort into growing their market. The general manager at the brewery was brilliant. I loved working with him. I wasn’t an employee, but an outside contractor. One Easter, he called me in a panic because he couldn’t get the monthly receivable accounts to print out, so I went in and did the whole run for him, and then forgot to bill the company for it. Eh, well, it gave me something to do. My partner was working the days off anyway, so it was no biggie. He was such a nice guy to help. He would sit and answer all my stupid chemistry questions.
I believe that is where I learned what ‘flocculation’ was.