This reminds me of my first technical writing job: Pacific Vegetable Oil -- a multinational corporation with headquarters in San Francisco's venerable ferry building. The accounting department decided to fix their huge turnover problem (60% of employees left every six months or so) by raising salaries? Oh no. By hiring Miss SmartyPants English graduate student to document every accounting function in the place. They reasoned that if there were an instructional manual associated with every position, the learning curve would be shorter and the turnover wouldn't cost as much. So I sat down with every employee and wrote an instructional manual for every position. I also became the second highest paid female in the company. This was 1975, I asked for and got $12.00/hour, so that should give you some idea.
That's where I got a crash course in modern accounting. That's where I learned that Marx wasn't making anything up. I'm happy to report that the company went bankrupt a couple of years after I finished writing up instructions. My year-long half-time stint paid for a couple of months in Europe, helped heal a broken heart, and turned me into a socialist.
Joanna