I used to work for a literary agency. One of the agency's roles was to accept royalty payments on behalf of authors, take out its commission, and pass on the rest of the payment to the author. This function was routinely performed incorrectly and late.

One year, on top of the usual errors, all authors whose names began with a 'C' received W-2s for exactly twice their actual earnings. The W-2s were issued by the bookkeeper, who was the only person in the entire firm who had access to the relevant information. For some reason, the president of the firm continued to protect the bookkeeper despite her obvious incompetance and total unwillingness to own up to her own mistakes. As the secretary to the president, I had to type the following paragraph in a memo he wrote to the agency:

Bookkeeping is not responsible for errors in accounting to our clients. When those occur -- as they will -- it makes no sense to blame "accounting," since each check is okayed by the responsible agent/assistant before it is mailed.

¶ 5:58 PM