Timestamp: 10th of Winter, 514AV
OOCHere and there in the thread, though not everywhere, I do a little fudging of costs to make everything turn out right. I felt it was more important to have things make logical sense than be explicitly price-list-correct.
Rosela tapped the end of her pencil as she looked over her ledger. It was a heavy, leather-bound book kept in neat Arumenic, to discourage snoopers. Not that she had any, but a little security didn’t hurt. Losing the Summer had put a dent in her profits and having skated along thus far with the most minor accounting, she felt she needed to brush up on her arithmetic. She couldn’t imagine anything beyond simple addition and subtraction would be needed; just add up one column and subtract the other, right?
On a separate sheet set aside for notes, she ran down the previous pages of the ledger and made note of all the supplies she’d bought in Spring, with their amounts and cost:
As she continued her list, she realized she had never caught on to how often she went shopping, and wondered how she managed to not pick up on how many times she ran out of this and that. Each shopping trip took several bells, with trips out to the Stained Pelt for fur taking most of the day. Just looking at the list, it astonished her how much time she had spent on what should have been a simple task.
Finally reaching the end of the Spring section, she looked down at her long list and sighed. So much spent on cloth. It was obviously the bread and butter of her business, but did she really need so much of it? Hiring Sheaya was supposed to offset that, but did she really know if it was? Making a note to the side, she reminded herself to look into the cost effectiveness of her employees. She couldn’t imagine firing Sheaya so soon after hiring her but…maybe she could get by on part time, if her work wasn’t cutting it? There had to be some way to find that sweet spot: the minimum paid for having her own weaver while getting the maximum benefit.
On the current train of notes though, she began to make new lists – grouping supplies by section. After each section was done, she began to add up each, slightly ashamed she had to resort to counting the points on the numbers to keep her addition straight. She hoped the shadows were as bad as math as she was, and thus wouldn’t make fun of her, or even that they didn’t do math at all and thought she was a genius.
”570 gold mizas for cloth! Alone! Not even with the thread!” Rosela exclaimed to the shadows, nearly picking up the page to show them. Nothing but the crackling of the fire greeted her, though she could see right into them, watching her in return. ”Doesn’t that seem like a lot to you?”
“You mis-wrote the third item.”
Rosela blinked for a moment, surprised by their matter-of-fact answer, and leaned over to check. She had indeed – a three had been made into a zero. She quickly redid her math, realizing only afterwards that she could have simply added the three to the final sum. ”It’s…It’s 573 gold now! Even worse!”
To this, the shadows had no response.
OOCHere and there in the thread, though not everywhere, I do a little fudging of costs to make everything turn out right. I felt it was more important to have things make logical sense than be explicitly price-list-correct.
Rosela tapped the end of her pencil as she looked over her ledger. It was a heavy, leather-bound book kept in neat Arumenic, to discourage snoopers. Not that she had any, but a little security didn’t hurt. Losing the Summer had put a dent in her profits and having skated along thus far with the most minor accounting, she felt she needed to brush up on her arithmetic. She couldn’t imagine anything beyond simple addition and subtraction would be needed; just add up one column and subtract the other, right?
On a separate sheet set aside for notes, she ran down the previous pages of the ledger and made note of all the supplies she’d bought in Spring, with their amounts and cost:
- Cloth (various), 7 bolts, 38gm 5sm
- Fur, 5lbs, 30gm
- Cloth (various), 5 bolts, 10gm 7sm 1cm
- Silk thread, 2 spools, 2gm 5sm
- Linen thread, 3 spools, 1sm 5cm
- Replacement needles, 1 pack, 18gm
- Cloth (cotton), 3 bolts, 1sm 3cm
- Accessories (terra cotta), 10 items, 23gm
- …
As she continued her list, she realized she had never caught on to how often she went shopping, and wondered how she managed to not pick up on how many times she ran out of this and that. Each shopping trip took several bells, with trips out to the Stained Pelt for fur taking most of the day. Just looking at the list, it astonished her how much time she had spent on what should have been a simple task.
Finally reaching the end of the Spring section, she looked down at her long list and sighed. So much spent on cloth. It was obviously the bread and butter of her business, but did she really need so much of it? Hiring Sheaya was supposed to offset that, but did she really know if it was? Making a note to the side, she reminded herself to look into the cost effectiveness of her employees. She couldn’t imagine firing Sheaya so soon after hiring her but…maybe she could get by on part time, if her work wasn’t cutting it? There had to be some way to find that sweet spot: the minimum paid for having her own weaver while getting the maximum benefit.
On the current train of notes though, she began to make new lists – grouping supplies by section. After each section was done, she began to add up each, slightly ashamed she had to resort to counting the points on the numbers to keep her addition straight. She hoped the shadows were as bad as math as she was, and thus wouldn’t make fun of her, or even that they didn’t do math at all and thought she was a genius.
”570 gold mizas for cloth! Alone! Not even with the thread!” Rosela exclaimed to the shadows, nearly picking up the page to show them. Nothing but the crackling of the fire greeted her, though she could see right into them, watching her in return. ”Doesn’t that seem like a lot to you?”
“You mis-wrote the third item.”
Rosela blinked for a moment, surprised by their matter-of-fact answer, and leaned over to check. She had indeed – a three had been made into a zero. She quickly redid her math, realizing only afterwards that she could have simply added the three to the final sum. ”It’s…It’s 573 gold now! Even worse!”
To this, the shadows had no response.
