An accountants sense of humour
Once upon a time my Dad worked for the bank of England as a young accountant back in the late 60's.

One of the many weekly tasks was the interbank cheque exchange.... As you can imagine back then computers were not exactly mainstream or portable etc so the way the banks dealt with cheques paid in at each branch was to sort them out into big bundles for each bank, then once a week all meetup and hand them over to one another.

So picture the scene if you will, my Dad and other young accountants all descend at the exchange with suitcases full of cheques. His suitcase contains brick sized bundles of cheques for Lloyds, for Barclays etc etc.

Given that this was the late 60's and a house cost less than £1000 as you can imagine the sum of all the cheques being exchanged in a week didn't add up to much, perhaps a million pounds given that most were for less than a pound to pay the milkman etc.

Around the same time there was a record breaking business takeover in the press. I forget the company but it was something along the lines of Phillips taking over Marconi or similar and it made the headlines because it was the most expensive takeover in history. Couple of million pounds.

Almost unbelieveably by todays standards, but this was the 60's, the transaction was actually carried out by cheque and sure enough one day in dad's suitcase was a cheque for millions of pounds. As you can imagine to a bunch of accountants this cheque was a trophy to be admired like a geek with a star wars toy and they all gazed at it's beauty.

Now this is where it gets interesting... as the 70's approached and technology was revolutionizing the world the bank had a new gadget called a photocopier. Sure enough to capture the moment my Dad photocopied the cheque. Then the accountants humour stepped in.... the copy was cut to size and sent through the system "to see what happens".

Come the end of the day there is panic and commotion! A clearing system that only processes a million or two in transactions each day is several million quid in the wrong direction. What could have gone wrong to cause a cockup of such a magnitude?

Finally someone makes the connection the value of the error is the same as the takeover value in the headlines and after much checking the souveneir counterfeit is located. My Dad keeps a low profile until he's summoned to the chief cashiers office and is given a stern talking to.... at the end of it all the old boy looks over the top of his half moon glasses across the expanse of leather topped desk and regards the young accountant before him.... "Still, it was jolly good fun wasn't it!?".


For those curious Dad stayed with the bank of England nearing the point where he would have been the signature on the bank notes himself. Then one day he was in a train crash, knocked out and saw some pretty nasty things. He gave up commuting to London the next day and took a job managing a local bank instead.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 16:11, 4 replies)

Familiar....
A certain company pays for their shares every month by cheque. A sum of well over a million, every month regular as clockwork. They could use a bank transfer, but then they wouldn't be able to keep the interest on 13 weeks of that sum of money.
And yes, I have photocopied every one but now see the idea of putting it through.......
(sunray18, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 16:21, closed)

Once saw a phone bill for over £2m
looked like any other phone bill (without dialled number detail etc).Instructions on the back said they could pay it at a post office or send a cheque in the post. They paid by cheque, it was a quarterly bill. I'm guessing they pay by direct debit now to save on the £4 admin charge.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Thu 16 Jul 2009, 18:19, closed)

I remember
the story you told about your Dad. Watford wasn't it? Bad shit.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Fri 17 Jul 2009, 14:42, closed)

Well done!
Yup we lived in Watford which is where he ended up managing the local bank but the crash was at Wembley.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Mon 20 Jul 2009, 9:27, closed)