Limits Of Decency

Staring at the piece of paper with columns of numbers and total below... Just finished measuring a truckload of timber that came from Musoma, which I ordered yesterday and left my worker there at the timber depot to supervise measuring the timber and loading on a truck. Then the vehicle arrived in the evening and my people offloaded the cargo. I asked the man I entrusted with the responsibility of making sure we get what we ordered if he was absolutely sure that this was the timber we ordered and if he was certain that the running meters of timber ordered match the running meters of timber we had just offloaded? He vehemently acknowledged that this was the case...Sorry, but I am too old to be a naive optimist...

My carpenters were eager to start using the timber for the formwork of the first beam in the water tank. I told them to keep away from the shipment.  I took a measuring tape, notebook and a pen. We measured each and every piece again. I ordered two sizes of timber - 1x8 inches and 2x4 inches. The number of pieces as declared on cargo manifest was matching, but I felt a familiar cramp in my stomach when I summed up the running meters of  each size. We were short fifty running meters in each size... One hundred running meters in total. This meant some 300 thousand shillings in loss. Luckily, I was not born yesterday and know this construction craft pretty well, so I know more or less the meanders of this business with so many shadowy areas and ways to cheat on the client. That is why I did not pay for the timber, as I told the dealer in Musoma, that I would come back on Wednesday or Thursday to pay...

I guess we will have an interesting conversation with the depot owner tomorrow or the day after. Either they used a fake measuring tape which is showing more length than it is in fact, or my man made a deal with the owner to make me believe the timber measurement was okey...

In any case, one of them will have to answer to this whole situation... I always have said that I can trust people in this business not more than 10%, but even with this limited trust, there are limits of decency...