Very effin' funny, KernelM, cool discovery. And so pathetic, too and so American, somehow.

In my early twenties, I worked for someone who cooked his books, too. I quit, but I also took a copy of the real books with me. ;>

(In case anyone wonders, I'm up late working on a logo design, so naturally I continue to procrastinate diddling around on here...)

QuoterGal | October 02, 11:15 CET

OMG! I heard this a few weeks ago but I didn't hear the very beginning and hear that this was Marti Noxon--!

Valsadie | October 02, 18:19 CET

Very interesting, that story. And a segment from John Hodgman in the same show too.

yourlibrarian | October 02, 18:58 CET

Had no idea that was Marti Noxon at the beginning. I have never, so far as I know, worked at a place that cooked the books.

wouldestous | October 03, 20:10 CET

Okay, I can't help myself, it's an illness, I know it, just pity & humour me:

CCLXXVIII. The world is too much with us

"The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not... "

-- William Wordsworth, excerpted

(This is posted partly to flesh out the "Getting and Spending" title of this TAL episode, partly because I can't help it, and partly in honour of Global Repercussions Girl, but so not trying to rub it in...)

QuoterGal | October 03, 23:09 CET

Thanks Quotergirl. And Global Repercussions Girl sends a muffled thanks to you too in her own tied up and gagged kind of way. ;-) What is that from? I want to look up the rest at home. I haven't read Wordsworth in...a long time.

I love This American Life, but again hardly ever hear it anymore. MN's story was great. Thanks for the link, KernalM!

I worked for a Savings and Loan for a year during the big S&L scandals of the 80's. I worked in their mortgage area. They kept giving me things to clean-up that had not been done in ages. A box of uncashed mortgage checks months old or monthly financial reports that no one knew how to do. I remember researching one report and finding that the figures on the old reports had been taken from different sources every month. I asked what to do, and was told to just pick a source and not to worry about it. I did, and told the Comptroller when I gave him the reports, I would not be signing them. He seemed startled, but did not argue with me. I kept not signing things until a few months later when 11 of us were laid off.

My understnading is, we were all named as witnesses in a lawsuit that had been filed against the S&L. I never heard any more about it until a couple years later when I met the head teller working retail and was told the Comptroller was serving time along with the owner of the S&L. I have never been so glad that I refused to sign things as I was in that job and I have never signed anything I was iffy about since.

newcj | October 04, 01:53 CET

Honesty + Ethical Biz Practices = Good Karma + That Integrated Feeling + A Beeautiful Complexion : >

The World Is Too Much With Us

QuoterGal | October 04, 03:35 CET

When I was a VISTA, right out of college, I worked for a neighborhood development corporation, a non-profit. After my VISTA year was up, I continued to volunteer for them. When the treasurer/property manager quit unexpectedly, the board asked me to store the financial records for the low income housing properties they owned at my home, so I did. When the new treasurer discovered a lot of money missing, they initially tried to blame it on me, even though I'd never handled any money, or even looked at the records. Pretty soon it came to obvious light that it had been the old treasurer who stole the money and cooked the books, but talk about no good deed going unpunished.

dreamlogic | October 04, 11:30 CET