Paying peanuts

I'm uncertain whether the six hours I spent yesterday at an ultra-small association on Penang island was well worth my time. It's a very small, traditional, conservative association with only 24 members. You may call it exclusively exclusive.

I received a distress call from the treasurer about a week ago to ask for help in finalising the association's account. "It doesn't add up," he said while twiddling his thumbs first counter-clockwise, then clockwise. It's not everyday that I'm called to fight such fires so I had to go and help him.

You know what? The account was in a mess but it was due more to miscommunication between the treasurer and the clerk responsible for posting the accounting entries. I was horrified. No proper reconciliation. No proper accounting procedures. Both cash and non-cash entries were mixed up together in a glorious mess.

"How can you both tell which are cash entries and which are not?" I asked the treasurer and the clerk. They looked at me and then at one another. "Well, we know," they replied. Yes, sure. Of course. Then I asked them: "But how would any other person know? I'm here to help you unravel the mess but how would I know?"

My wife would tell me, if you pay peanuts, this is what you'll get.

As another example, there was this monthly expense item attributed to ancestral worship. Very small item, only RM36. But I didn't know that RM26 would go to the treasurer to buy some of the paraphernalia but RM10 would go to a caretaker to buy something else! The problem was that it was the clerk's job to pass the RM10 to the caretaker (with her own money) and she would then claim it back from the association through some convoluted contra methods. Now, why couldn't the treasurer himself pass the RM10 to the caretaker or give the RM10 to the clerk to pass over to the caretaker? Why allow the account to be messed up. Mmm....

Small things like these can eventually accumulate to become bigger problems and they did! And I had to clean it up for them. The job's not finished yet but after six hours staring at the accounts and bank statements, I was all blurred up. Let's all go home. "I've given you enough pointers on what to do. Please clean up the remaining mess by yourselves as soon as possible."

You know what's the more chilling stuff? When the clerk was recommended to the association initially, the recommender had confidently informed the members that she was also doing the account for some other similar-sized associations and there was no problem. So she was hired to do the same job here.

Unfortunately, the association was not prepared to pay more than peanuts. Well, this is what you get when you pay peanuts.