His phone beeped. The dishwasher had finished and wanted emptying. He marked the message as read and went back to his spreadsheet. He needed to complete it by four.
His phone beeped again.
The dishwasher was getting impatient.
He turned his phone off and went back to his cashflow forecast. The totals still didn’t match. He’d have to check the expenditure.
A beeping noise sounded downstairs but he ignored it.
The microwave dinged.
“Mandy. Is that you?”
Mandy shouldn’t be home. He looked out of the window. The tiny amount of morning snow had already melted and he couldn’t imagine it would have been a problem, unless of course the school boiler had broken, again.
“Mandy.”
Still no reply. Maybe he’d imagined the microwave ding.
He found a human error where someone had typed 2-3 instead of 3-2. But the totals were still out. He’d have to check the sales.
He yawned and looked at the time. It felt later. He was so tired. He looked outside again and saw bright sunshine – it had turned into one of those cold crisp days.
He wasn’t cold himself. In fact it was so hot in the house it was no surprise he was dozing off. He stretched across and touched the radiator and almost burnt his hand.
He turned his phone on to check the heating app but before it had loaded he saw six new notifications. One surprising one was from the microwave telling him that it had finished heating his lunch.
The other five were increasingly dramatic messages from the dishwasher. The last one sounded like a threat. He read it again. “Cycle complete at 11.30 am. You must empty the dishwasher. Immediate response required.”
He marked the notification as read and then for completeness deleted all of them.
The heating app showed the temperature of the radiators had been increased. It was way too high. He turned it down and then hovered over the button that would lock the app to stop Mandy from making mistakes. Maybe he should talk to her first.
At last he tracked down the hidden error. One row had a value instead of a formula. Once corrected everything added up, but suddenly the spreadsheet seemed to flicker and a new error appeared. Everything had matched. He hadn’t even been touching the keyboard. It didn’t make sense.
Maybe he’d take a coffee break and come back refreshed. He checked his watch. It too close to four o’clock and he didn’t have time to go downstairs.
He copied each formula row by row and column by column to ensure that there were no more hidden errors, but he was still one hundred and fifty pound out. He just couldn’t find where the extra money was hiding.
His phone beeped. There was another barrage of messages from the dishwasher, but also one from the coffee machine telling him his coffee was ready. He could smell coffee. It was tempting, but he needed to find the mistake.
Fifteen minutes. He only had fifteen minutes. He needed to do something quick, but before he had time to do anything, his doorbell popped up a video on his computer screen. There was a man with a trolley at the door. He was tempted to ignore the man but heard a volley of heavy knocks.
“Here you go. One hundred and fifty pound.”
The man passed him a wodge of ten pound notes and wheeled his trolley through the door.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m here to collect the dishwasher.”
The man showed him a sales receipt.
“I can’t you believe you haven’t emptied it.”
“I didn’t know we were selling it.”
“Well. You’d better empty it now unless you want me to take your plates and your cups.”
He emptied the dishwasher, saw the grumpy man out the door and rushed back to his desk. He screen was blank until he wiggled the mouse and the spreadsheet reappeared.
As he watched one row was highlighted in yellow. It was for the sale of a dishwasher for one hundred and fifty pound. The row deleted itself and suddenly the totals added up.
His phone beeped.
There was one final notification from the dishwasher. It was just one word.
Goodbye.