Are you familiar with Project Blue Book? It was an official investigation of UFOs by the United States Air Force, active from 1952 until 1969. There were precursor investigation (Project Sign and Project Grudge). In the late 1970’s there was a popular TV show fictionalizing the results of Project Blue Book. The History Channel has just begun their own Project Blue Book show.
I have my “Blue Book” story. It was early 1981. I was the junior person on a four person financial management program rotation. I was sitting with the most senior program member, two other team members had quit the company. We were doing some crash cross training to survive the vacancies. She (I’ll call her Terri) had some serious skills, and a weird multi tasking ability. This was right before personal computers took over offices. In finance, huge quantities of manual calculations were required. Everyone had a massive old school calculator on their desk. Terri was staring at a sheet with a long list of numbers to be manually added, her fingers of her right hand flying over the calculator without looking, while talking to me. Then, without pause, her left hand went to the phone pad, hit the speaker and dialed long distance… all while still banging on the calculator and talking to me. Her eyes never left the sheet… she was no look calculating with her right hand and no look dialing with her left, and still talking to me. Adding to the degree of difficulty, the numbers layout on those old phones were reversed from what was on a calculator.
I stopped her, “How can you do that?”
“Oh, I don’t think, I just do it.”
I joked that she was a freak, couldn’t be human, must be from another planet.
A couple of minutes later, it was off to lunch with Terri saying, “When we get back, we can do the Blue Book Project.”
“Riiiiiight, Project Blue Book,” I replied.
“No, really, we need to go collect all the blue books, the corporate auditors arrive tomorrow”
“Why are they called blue books?”
“Because they are blue.”
“What is in the blue books?”
“Our actual financial results for the last five years.”
“Why would we gather them before the auditors come?”
“Because these are our real actual results. Not the reported results we publish”
“Wait! We have two sets of books?”
“Yes, the blue books contain the results if we didn’t have adjustments. Each blue book is numbered, collected and placed in a hidden safe for as long as the auditors are here.”
I was stunned. Didn’t learn this in college. Being conservative was prudent… high ending reserves, conservative accruals. But this was something I had never heard of, or seen since. Two sets of books. Millions ultra conservatively buried in unbooked sales, specific products liability reserves, accruals… a huge rainy day fund.
Project Blue Book: The US Air Force may still have their secrets. But so did we.