#mathisnotreal

A growing archive of workplace mysteries and corporate absurdities, solved (or not) by your underpaid logic consultant.

Date: July 2025 Filed by: Me, the reluctant analyst of haunted payrolls Subject: A payroll mystery that somehow involves ghosts, math, and emotional labor

The Setup A business center was closed for 6 out of 7 days in a work week. The question: how many hours should we pay employees for that closure period?

There are 7 calendar days in the business center's work week. The closure affected six scheduled workdays, not all seven calendar days. So we prorate pay over the six impacted days—not the full week—because that’s how reality works.

On Sunday, the business center would be open, and some employees would be working. I did what any competent payroll professional would do: ✔ I calculated a 6-day proration, based on their typical working schedule. ✔ I documented the math. ✔ I sent it in a Teams message to my manager on Friday. ✔ She read it—I know this because she said “I’ll respond to your message from Friday later.” (✨ Spoiler: she did not.)

Her ‘I’ll respond later’ is corporate code for never acknowledging I exist until after she’s already made the wrong decision

The Math Crime Instead of using my proration—which was correct, documented, and literally handed to her—she went rogue and invented logic so bad it defied space-time.

She calculated a 7-day average of hours worked by each employee and then subtracted the Sunday hours actually worked for the subset of employees that worked on Sunday… to get a number that’s just mathematically dumb. But she told me to process her calculations anyway.

This would already be absurd if it were a one-off. But this is how it always goes:

I do the math

I explain the math

She ignores the math

She invents bad math

Her math gets processed

I get to fix the fallout

Oh—and no explanation was ever given for why she went with her method. No feedback. No “hey, I disagree, here’s why.” Just silence. And then a ghost calculation pushed through payroll like it never needed to make sense in the first place.

Payroll isn’t a feelings-based system. Numbers exist. Schedules exist. But somehow, she chose Vibes.

Visual Exhibit A: The Spreadsheet Breakdown: In my proration spreadsheet, you’ll see that out of 14 employees, 12 are being overpaid using her method, and 2 are being underpaid—not exactly the kind of “balanced” outcome one might expect from a 7-day average. My method, shown in the same sheet, correctly prorates based on the 6 actual closure days.

The Ghost Copilot Seance Out of pure disbelief, I checked her calculated numbers. They didn’t line up with either the employee’s actual schedule or the math I submitted.

So I summoned the ghost of logic past—aka Microsoft Copilot—to confirm I wasn’t losing my mind.

It backed me up.

The numbers don’t track.

My proration was accurate.

What got processed… was not.

Copilot agrees: I’m not imagining things—just haunted by bad math.

But by then, it was finalized. The bad math lives on—eternal and unbothered.

The Ironic Twist On the same day all this happened, my manager finally admitted to making a mistake.

Not about this. Not about the math. Not about ignoring my message.

Nope—she just apologized for forgetting to flag an email.

First admission of fault in 2.5 years. Flagging. An. Email.

TL;DR I did the proration math. It was correct. I communicated it. It was ignored. She made up new math. It got processed. And now a ghost calculation haunts our payroll system forever.