Inventory Adjustment

Inventory Adjustment / Frank Correa
Posted on September 2, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba , August, www.cubanet.org – Among the best thought-up
institutional ways of stealing was, for a long time, the "Inventory
Adjustment," a concept introduced in commercial enterprises, which
allowed them to absorb a kind of black hole of countless "oddities,"
which were not being analyzed and much less being called by their name:
Theft.

Inventory Adjustment was a standing item on the agenda of the Board of
Directors. Masking multiple benefits through misappropriation, that no
one dared to denounce, for fear of being frowned upon by the other
leaders of the company.

At the end of the month, all the warehouses undertake a count of their
products, but there was always a disconnect between the records of the
department of Economics and what really existed. This is called
"Inventory Difference," a concept where losses occur due to
deterioration, breakage, confiscation… in numbers that reached tens of
thousands of pesos, which added up between all the companies in one
province could amount to millions, and which grew each year, to an
uncontrollable point.

The difference in inventory was a complex economic event where several
factors converged. From broken roofs which let the rain in which in turn
spoiled many products, with the reports doubling or tripling (and with
the "losses" later sold on the black market), to unpunished "credit
notes," where the sole signature of the Head Manager justified spending
money from a bill in the cash register directly to the pocket.

In the wholesale companies one anecdote became proverbial, which
occurred in warehouse 637 in Guantanamo, when surprise inspection found
a half ton of rice accounted for as "sweepings," that is not fit for
consumption, having been spilled during the downloading. With irony,
inspectors congratulated the warehouse workers, "for having collected
the spilled rice to pack it back into the bags, and then seal them, as
if they had just left the producer in Brazil."

The ultimate of these company directors, deputy directors, accountants
and financial managers, was to institute an internal call for "Inventory
Adjustment," which , at the end of the month, magically erased 14% of
the difference issued in inventory. That is, of every hundred thousand
pesos, twenty-eight thousand are automatically subtracted first day of
each month.

Very few of these authors of authorized embezzlement ever paid for their
crimes. Today almost all are retired, or dead. Those who survive look
askance at the new Comptroller, and — although they know that corruption
is alive and kicking – the take as their greatest enemy the new
discourse that calls for a fight against it. They dream of the happy
times when no one talked about the issue, when everything was easy and
everything was resolved with "Inventory Adjustments."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Correa, born in Guantanamo in 1963. Storyteller, poet and
freelance journalist. He has won prizes in the Regino E. Boti, Ernest
Hemingway and Thomas Savignon contests, all in 1991 . He has published a
book of stories, La elección. beilycorrea@yahoo.es

30 August 2013

Source: "Inventory Adjustment / Frank Correa | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/inventory-adjustment-frank-correa/