Right. Put the flask down. Six boxes, labels washed off in the depot yard, and the van that took them is coming back at eleven to take them again. That is the whole situation and it is arithmetic, so don't stand there.
Everything you need is pinned up there — the carbon of the despatch book, which is in pencil, because Ramanathan writes in pencil in a room with a hole in the roof, and I have been asking for a proper ledger pen since February. Two corrections on it, both his, both circled. Read them before you touch anything.
The balance is on the left. Hang a box, it reads. It has never been zeroed in the years I've been here, so the number it gives you is the true weight plus whatever it feels like adding today — the same amount every time, mind, so the difference between two boxes is honest and the single figure is not. And take off the box: carton and packing paper together, one hundred and ninety grams, every time. Subtract it or don't bother comparing.
Scissors slit a box open. You get the colour and the metreage and nothing else — no name in there, we never put one in. And the franking's printed across the seam, so the second you cut, the postage is gone. Two cuts. That's all the boxes I'm willing to have re-taped before eleven.
| Customer | Cloth | Ord. | To | Zn |
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