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Legal Notice

Until Further Notice¶

The printout lies on the table between us with one line marked in red. 31,400 euros, approved by N. Prentice, March 27, 14:52.

The N stands for Naomi. It is my line, and every number on it is correct.

Merrick asks whether I was authorized to do that. I say yes. He asks whether I can prove it.

March 13, Six Months Earlier¶

Ballard is out. He doesn't say what it is and I don't ask. On the phone he sounds like a man who has been told something and has not finished thinking about it yet.

In the afternoon HR calls. Could I cover for him. A few weeks, they say, possibly longer.

I have been in purchasing here for eleven years. The volume doesn't frighten me; the part of the job I have never done is the part Ballard keeps for himself, which is sitting across from suppliers who have known him for two decades and telling them no. I say yes anyway, because the alternative is that nobody signs anything for weeks, and nobody can tell me how many.

Two days later the memo is in my in-tray, countersigned by Ballard and by the managing director. Deputy Head of Purchasing. Approval limit 50,000 euros. Effective March 13 until further notice.

The last three words don't bother me. Nobody knows when he is coming back, so there is no date anyone could honestly write down. I put the memo in the drawer where I keep things I will not need again.

On Monday I log in and my profile says 50,000 instead of 10,000. Everything works exactly as it is supposed to.

March 27, 14:52¶

Thurlow's price commitment expires at the end of the month. From April, eighteen percent more on steel bar stock. It is in writing and it is not a negotiating position; I call and it is still not a negotiating position.

We need the material in May regardless. So the question is only whether we buy it now at the old price or in five weeks at the new one.

I run it twice. Pulling the second-quarter demand forward costs us storage space and about three weeks of tied-up capital, and it saves 4,900 euros. I call Pike in the warehouse and ask whether he can take four pallets earlier than planned. He can, grudgingly, which is how Pike does everything.

The order comes to 31,400 euros.

Before I approve it I look at my limit, because that is what you do. 50,000. There is no prompt, no second pair of eyes, no note in the margin. Why would there be. At 14:52 I approve PO-4471 and move on to the next line item.

It is the kind of decision Ballard would have made in ten seconds and I have taken forty minutes over it. I am mildly pleased with myself for the rest of the afternoon, and then I forget about it entirely for six months.

April¶

Ballard is back, earlier than expected and thinner. He goes straight into a supplier meeting on his second day, which everyone including me agrees is stupid.

My profile says 10,000 again. I see the number and think nothing at all.

May¶

Reorganization in purchasing: four areas become three, two people move, one team leader position disappears. My role is still called PUR-2. It has a new limit, 7,500 euros.

For two days I am annoyed, because I now need Ballard's signature for parts that cost less than a decent office chair. Then I get used to it, the way you get used to a door that sticks.

Nothing has been deleted. The field simply holds a different number now.

September¶

Internal audit runs an automated check across the year: every order compared against the approval limit of the person who approved it. Six thousand line items. Eleven exceptions.

Ten of them are transposition errors, cleared in an afternoon by putting two numbers next to each other.

The eleventh needs a date.

Merrick is polite about it. He puts the printout on the table with one line in red and asks whether I was authorized. I say yes. He asks whether I can prove it, and I say of course, and that is the last easy sentence of the month.

It takes me five days to understand that I cannot.

What the Systems Remembered¶

The approval log. It is complete, unbroken, tamper-evident and retained for seven years. It says: Prentice, approval, PO-4471, March 27, 14:52:16. It says nothing about what my limit was at 14:52. It records what I did. It does not record what I was permitted to do.

The role assignment. Doyle from IT shows me the table on his screen. There is one row for me and a column called valid_from, and it says May 4. I ask where the March row is. He says there is one row per person; it gets changed, not added to. He says it the way you would explain that water is wet, and he is not being unhelpful, he is being accurate.

I ask...