AN AUDITOR'S DIARY -PART 2

VIRGINIA

On my second visit to Virginia branch, I was checking safe custody items in the basement strongroom, when I spotted what I took to be a flower vase standing alone on a shelf. When I queried it, the staff informed me in rather hushed tones, that it was a funeral urn which contained someone’s ashes. They confessed that they were always uneasy while working in the strongroom since that urn came in and would never enter the room alone. It’s amazing how one’s imagination can run away with one.

The branch had a lift which ran from the toilets on the first floor, down to the basement. Feeling idle one morning, I chose the lift when returning from the loo. It took me down to the basement and just stuck there. It would not open the door and would not move back upstairs again either. I confidently rang the emergency bell, sure that my sojourn in the lift would be of brief duration. It was a substantial bell which I was sure would be heard halfway across town but to my chagrin, no-one pitched up. Thoroughly annoyed I stood on that button and vigorously banged on the door still to no avail. I had wasted at least twenty minutes ringing, shouting and banging and by now was simply livid. I was so angry that I got my hands in the crack in the door and pulled with all my might and considerable weight. I heard something snap in the mechanism and at last I was free. I stormed up the steps into the office and apoplectic with rage, let everyone in sight have it! I demanded to know why no-one had responded to the ringing bell, but no answers were forthcoming. I started feeling a bit foolish as my rage dissipated but no-one came near my desk for the rest of the day!

The lift mechanic was mystified by the broken door – he could not believe I had broken it with my bare hands…..

UPINGTON

Bush Morley and I travelled all of New Year’s Day to be in Upington when the branch opened for business on the 2nd of January. It was consideration on our part because the branch had to balance the books for the month-end anyway and only the savings ledger would not normally have had to be balanced. Upington at that stage had the largest non computerized current account ledger department in the country. Considering that Upington served Gordonia district which was bigger than the entire Free State, it was quite understandable. I was daunted when I called for the overdraft sheets which I had to check in their entirety but I spent an hour a day on the sheets and eventually got through them all. To my amazement, I found no errors worth noting – a singular achievement. I piled up the sheets on my table and had Elsa Deysel stop them from toppling over, while I took a snap. It was a feather in that lady’s cap as she had checked them all herself.

The accountant at the time rather fancied himself as a hit with the ladies, which maybe he was. I have never had that privilege and have always been resigned to the fact. One day the fellow came rushing upstairs and excitedly told me to come down and pretend to be looking for something, so I could be witness to the “stunner” he was interviewing for a job in his cubicle. I glanced at the young lass sitting in his cubicle and immediately recognised her as a second cousin of mine. Without further ado I went up and kissed her hello. WELL !! You should have seen Mr Ladykiller’s face. Here was drab old Lyle cheerfully getting chummy with his “stunner”, right off the bat and his attentions being enthusiastically reciprocated by the lady. Oh that was a fine moment.

We were invited to the manager, Mr Strompie Strydom’s house for a bit of a party. He obviously had friends with a KWV quota because there were several bottles of KWV Roodeberg wine, “breathing” on the drinks table. The accountant and I nicked a bottle and hid it behind a curtain, from where we would surreptitiously refill our glasses. At one stage I heard Strompie ask what had happened to all the Roodeberg as he was sure he had put out a sufficient number. We stayed mum. Years later, Strompie was by now General Manager in the Free State and I went up to pay my respects to him. I also said that I had a confession to make: That night at his house, the accountant and I were guilty of hijacking that Roodeberg wine. He laughed delightedly and said that he had had a suspicion that we were the culprits. He was a good sport and a helluva nice guy all round.

NELSPRUIT

I joined Alex le Roux for the audit of Nelspuit. The manager was Swannie Swanepoel, a really powerful looking fellow who I later discovered, had been heavyweight boxing champion in Namibia in his younger days. He was really not a man to be trifled with and he ruled his office with a kind, but iron hand. Came the day when I told all the tellers that they were to change the combinations on their undercounter safes and to please not put the same combination on again because I would be uplifting their old combination and testing to see if it had been changed. Swannie stood at his door and bellowed that he would personally bliksem anyone who failed to do as told. The combinations were duly changed and I went from safe to safe, trying to open them with the old combinations. When I got to the third youngster, I happened to look him in the eye – his face was ashen and he was sweating profusely. Uh oh! He obviously thought I was bluffing and would never check all the combinations – but I did. Needless to say I opened his on the old numbers but his terror did not stem so much from what I was going to do to him but from the way he thought Swannie was going to rearrange his face!

DEWETSDORP

If you don’t have any understanding of colloquial Afrikaans, you may as well skip this one. I arrived at this branch to find that the accountant was away in the army. The senior lady, normally probably a ledger supervisor, was acting in the position. As the audit progressed, I was impressed by the calm, efficient manner this lady was handling the job under quite trying circumstances. When it came to the staff report on her, I had in mind to tell her that I was giving her an excellent report, as I really enjoyed pushing promising ladies. My direct translation into Afrikaans went, ‘Ek hou daarvan om belowende dames to stoot as ek kan’, but in everyday Afrikaans, that has quite a different, decidedly saucy meaning. She had a naughty smile on her face when she slyly asked me if that was REALLY what I meant. Backtracking on my words, I realized what I had said and boy was my face red. She teased me mercilessly for the rest of that audit, wanting to know when I was going to start and things like that. I’m lucky she was such a good sport – some touchy ladies might see my remark as sexual harassment!

BRIARDENE, DURBAN

Early on in my audit career, I visited Briardene with some of the Natal team. The branch was just across the Tugela, on the way to the townships and had a particularly large and busy savings department. I was young, unattached and still frisky and had a tendency to develop (and get over) crushes quite suddenly. It was a lonely life for goodness sake. One was never in one place long enough to develop relationships and I wasn’t one for one night stands either. In charge of the savings department was the cutest little French chick, pretty as a picture with a French accent to boot. I fell hook line and sinker for her! As luck would have it, the savings department was given to me and to my dismay, it really was not doing well. My list of exceptions just grew longer and longer. When I eventually handed the list to sweet little Cookie (Yes, that really was what they called her) she burst into tears. Oh dear – I felt so bad I actually considered tearing up my exceptions! But I didn’t and I left the branch with a broken heart. Just as well I never tried to cosy up to the lass because I discovered afterwards that she had a boyfriend with a black belt in karate!!

One thing about crushes was that they were like buses – as soon as soon passed, another would be along shortly. And so it went until I eventually met the lady to whom I am still married today.

SOUTHERNWOOD, EAST LONDON

One of my all-time favourite branches to call on was always Southernwood. It just had a great atmosphere and hospitable staff members, not to mention a cheerful pub in which to slake one’s thirst at the end of a week. There was however, a fly in the ointment at one stage – they had an insufferably bumptious accountant who was universally disliked but also so pigheaded that he believed the exact opposite. He had absolutely no ability to deal with staff and his lofty, deprecating, holier-than-thou way of speaking to everyone (Including me) really got up everyone’s noses. Apparently, he would quite often have disagreements with the manager’s assistant who would exact his revenge in a novel way. The branch was unique in having a licence to play music over speakers in the banking hall. They had a collection of cassette tapes and a tape deck with which to pipe the music out. I noticed that every so often, the manager’s assistant would whisper to the lady in charge of the music and next thing, the Mac Davis song “Lord it’s hard to be humble” would ring out over the speakers. Then I heard a lady say, “Oh dear, Mr X and Mr Y have been fighting again. He’s getting at him with that song”. Mr Y, (The accountant, was too pompous and self absorbed to realize that the song was being aimed at him. Here’s a sample of the lyrics :

Oh Lord it's hard to be humble When you're perfect in every way I can't wait to look in the mirror Cause I get better looking each day To know me is to love me I must be a hell of a man Oh Lord It's hard to be humble, But I'm doing the best that I can

Mr Y unfortunately was a huge man and really not one to be tackled head-on so he had to be confronted in a more subtle way by the much smaller Mr X. I thought the whole thing was just priceless. And when I was discussing his staff report with him, Mr Y proudly announced that his best attribute was his ability to get on with people……….

ELLIOT

I was not ready to step into the role of peacekeeper when I arrived at this branch, many years back. I had just walked in at the door when the accountant asked if he could speak to me in private. His manager was away and he wanted to inform me that half the staff members were going to walk out, if the manager and his wife (also on the staff) were not moved and would I please do something about it. By golly that was a shock. I immediately started interviewing everybody and trying to get to the root of the threatening mutiny. It soon became apparent that the cause of the problem was the manager’s wife. The manager was a shy, quiet fellow whose wife was obviously ruling the roost back home and was using him to further her own battles with various staff members. I really don’t know what motivated her but she had a highly annoying way of interfering with the running of the office. The accountant, also a quiet. religious fellow, could not stand up to her either and the only opposition to her reign came from the check clerk, a tough, rather abrasive fellow. It seemed she would start confrontations in the office and if she failed to get her way, would haul her hapless husband out of his office and demand that he take action against whoever had upset her. It was a terrible situation. A week later when the manager returned to work, I was ready with a whole folder full of written complaints. Staff Department in Port Elizabeth asked me to please assist them as they had no-one to send and the Chief in Johburg agreed that I should. Never mind that I had virtually no experience of dispute resolution or arbitration.

Then followed the most harrowing week of my career as I took over the manager’s chair and brought various combinations of warring staff members together, to talk frankly about what was troubling them. I warned them that I wanted the truth and would bang heads with them until I had it all. The majority of the complaints were really petty and quite childish but eventually there was a hardcore of fact, which was soon resolved. I sent off a report detailing my actions and the results and turned to start the audit proper.

I settled myself at a table and called for their balancing – everything went quiet. One girl tearfully piped up and admitted that the branch had not balanced once in at least six weeks! I was aghast as they were now looking to me to sort out this disaster as well. I remember saying that I was sorry that I had not had ANY training on balancing the computer books and when they all groaned that they were really lost now, I added I was going to teach myself and them what to do as it could not be rocket science!

That bit of bravado and basic bulltwang did the trick. It quickly transpired that the branch had just failed to clear all suspense accounts daily and that millions of Rand were stuck in these accounts. I gave several of the ladies the job of helping me balance and before long, the massive balances on computer suspense accounts had dwindled to a few thousand rand. At this point Johannesburg postponed the audit and sent me to Durban to help with the take-on of branches onto the computer system. I spent two weeks in Durban and returned to Elliot to start my audit once again.

This time I was met by a positive crew who couldn’t wait to tell me the news that differences were down to a few hundred Rand and that daily balancing was running perfectly smoothly. At last I could finish an audit which should not have taken more than 10 days but went on for 6 weeks! It was one time I felt that I had earned a pat on the back for a job done really well, which had benefited the bank in every possible way. Alas, no such praise was forthcoming as Johannesburg just weren’t impressed. Ho hum, just another routine audit ………..

WEPENER

This little drama unfolded about a week after I started at this branch. I remained in the branch during the lunch hour as I was staying in Ladybrand and could not slip home for lunch. The rest of the staff went home for lunch and the cash and everything else, would be locked in the strongroom. On the day in question, the staff returned and waited for the accountant to unlock the door. He eventually turned up looking pale and saying that he seemed to have lost the key. It was a Chubb key, with a removable bit on a long stem. Normally the bit would be removed and inserted into a keyring clip for easy transport but he had taken the entire key home with him. I immediately joined in the search and retraced his steps all the way back to his home. He had parked his car in the sandy street, so I parked some distance away and walked back from where it was obvious that he had parked. I walked back and forth to his front gate and after a few minutes, something shiny in the sand caught my eye – it was the key, 95% buried in the sand. This is a shortened version which doesn’t really reflect the drama which went on until at least 2.30 pm. A disgruntled and grumbling pack of customers was waiting for us when we got back and opened the strongroom! And no, I didn’t make an exception – he had been punished quite enough already.

MARQUARD

While I called on this branch several times during my years on the road, my visit once to conduct what we called “High Risk Audits” sticks in my memory. I arrived early in the day, well before opening time and knocked on the wooden front door. A girl who did not know me from Adam, opened the door and without any further ado, invited me in. I was taken aback but not nearly as much as the Manager and Accountant who were making up a cash parcel in the little strongroom. The safe was wide open and cash on display and I simply walked in and greeted them! I said something like, “Sorry chaps, this is your first exception and I’m afraid it’s a serious one”. When questioned about why she had let me in, the girl felt that I had an “honest face”. Thanks for that my girl but so do many crooks!