You may have forgotten that I’m being audited next Tuesday, because I almost forgot it myself. I was so involved in other things all week that I neglected to stress myself out over the audit until today, when I ran out of other things to worry about, and it hit me smack in the face. Now I’m nervous.

Naturally, and as always, I did all of the easy parts first. I printed the records the auditor will want to see — check records and payroll records and workers comp reports. Then, late this afternoon, when it was already too late to do anything about it if I didn’t have it, I started looking for the insurance certificate from the one subcontractor we hired this year.

The thing is, if I can’t find the insurance certificate, our workers comp carrier will charge us at the full rate for all of the work done by this subcontractor. And we paid this guy three hundred thousand dollars. I can’t even write it out in numerals, because it looks so bad and scary. When Tim phoned about some fluffy bit of nonsense, I was already beside myself, and I let him know it. “Just tell me if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said sheepishly before hanging up. As if.

I looked through every bit of paper that’s come across my desk in the past year. I looked through every file box and went through every folder. It’s not as if I haven’t been here before. This happens to me a lot, but usually not so much is on the line. Usually it’s a phone message the Boss forgot to save, or something harmless like that. With the audit Tuesday and Friday almost over, it would have given me one day, and a Monday at that, to talk the subcontractor into providing me with another certificate. Not something I would have liked to do a week before Christmas.

Well, you already know how this came out, don’t you? I found the certificate, although I’m not sure it will satisfy the auditor completely. It’s just a proof of insurance, which proves nothing except that they have an insurance policy. It doesn’t say they were covered on our job. That’s implied, I would think, but then I think logically, not the way insurance companies think.

Anyway, I found what I was looking for, in one of the piles of papers I moved off my desk when I set up the new computer. I think it was in the pile that used to be where the mouse is now that I’ve moved the mouse from where it used to be. That’s why it was so hard to find, don’t you know. I pretty much know where everything is, as long as nothing ever gets moved.