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As it turns out, I can’t do things the way I did them when I was younger. This isn’t much of a revelation, I know, especially when it comes to things like pedaling a bicycle uphill. Some of the things I can’t do now I don’t need to do any more, like climbing up and down the ladder in the back of the shoe store, stocking the shelves like a madman. But it’s always surprising to realize that I can no longer sit at the computer for eight or ten hours at a time, the way I once did. This day would have gone by more quickly if I could still do that.
Here at The Company, you see, we do everything the hard way. Because the Boss doesn’t think there’s a commercial accounting software that can create reports as good as the reports I create by hand (and Excel), I do most of my bookkeeping by hand (and Excel). That means that after the last payroll of 2008, which I completed yesterday, I have to enter (by hand, into Excel) the withholding information for 2009. In the case of the tax tables, that turns into an awful lot of typing for a pair of hands that are just over three months shy of being sixty years old.
So that’s how I spent the next-to-last day of the year, getting back to my roots. Data entry used to be a pleasure, because I was good at it. Back in the old days, I’d take this kind of work home and stay up all night doing it. Now I start it as early as possible, because I know I’ll have to take frequent breaks to keep my aging body from breaking down. The Boss has no clue how much I put into doing things his way. In fact, he’s in Texas all week, running someone else’s life. |
