Yesterday an unknown individual (or individuals) stole a service car from Sodexho. In the margin of the theft, the news mentioned the amount of “dienstencheques” – service cheques – in the car and the repercussion this will have on paying back the companies working with these cheques.

What was astonishing, is the administration used to manage this system. Each cheque that has been used, is being copied as proof of use of this cheque, just to cover incidents as the stolen car.
So, a little calculation. Yearly (2008) almost 48.930.000 cheques were used. These cheques are copied on A3 paper. Each A3 paper contains the copies of 24 cheques.

This results in 2.038.750 sheets of paper (no they are not copied recto-verso). This will give you 856.275 meter paper, or 856 km, 5 km less than the distance between Antwerp and Copenhagen.

Lets calculate some time: About 2.5 minutes/copy: this will give you 48 employees who are working 8 hours/day and 220 days a year.

Instead of cutting back on the cheques, maybe they could improve the way of managing it.