Reply to post: I'm sorry but that man was born without a brain

I'm sorry but that man was born without a brain

Comment from a colleague after a particularly taxing time with the guy in charge of sales at an old job.

Amongst his support calls:

"I've saved an attachment and it's disappeared, it's really important come down now and fix it" - Saved a PDF and was trying to open it through the Excel file open dialog.

"I've an Excel sheet with figures and I want an answer at the bottom"

"What kind of answer? A total? Average?

"I don't know, I just think it should have something at the bottom"

Also a doomed project to work out the profit on all products:

"OK, so how do you work out profit now?"

"Well, I know we sell it for this amount and I've decided we'll make 2% profit so I divide the sales price by 1.02 and that tells me what it costs to make"

"Riiight..."

"Then I take off the material costs which gives me the machining costs"

"OK... but aren't the machining costs fixed? I mean running the same machine for the same amount of time must cost the same every time"

"Well no because if I decide to sell the product at 5% profit then I divide the sales price by 1.05 and the cost to make it goes down. The materials cost the same so the machine time must cost less or the figures don't add up"

I think the last one sent said colleague over the edge.