Oh, it's inventory time in the office, tra-la.

Probably the most dreaded exercise of the year, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Not only do we have to crawl around on hands and knees, looking for inventory stickers and serial numbers and model identifiers...

We are also insulted by being given a printout which is ostensibly of last year's inventory, but clearly is a document which hasn't been updated in 4 or 5 years.

I know this because I keep my own inventories for at least three years. I have retrieved the records showing last year's inventory items that were sent to salvage a couple of years ago. But there they are, still listed as being in my office. Infuriating.

I agree that we have to know where our equipment and furniture is, who has what and so forth, but it's an insult to spend all that time, grubbing around in dark musty dusty corners getting accurate information--only to have it not used to update the inventory records downtown.

The other source of moaning and groaning always concerns the value of items. Anything whose purchase value was less than $500 does not need to go on inventory. Terrific. When we receive something like the replacement for our fax machine from our warehouse, it has an inventory control number on it, but nowhere is its purchase price recorded.

So how do we know which items to put on inventory and which not? Clearly, not keyboards and not mice. But what about monitors? Some are over the $500 limit; some not. I'm not current enough with wholesale prices to know what my monitor cost. So I guess, when in doubt, put it on the equipment inventory page.

After all, the records downtown won't be updated anyway. Who cares? Who even looks at this stuff? I'll bet they just get filed away in some cockroach infested file drawer folder, waiting to be tossed out in a decade or so.

Yup. I'm ready to retire.