The Shifting Numbers
A free B2-level English story for language learners, readable online in 7 languages, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
Dominic suspects sabotage when his shared spreadsheet keeps changing overnight, until the version history reveals a much simpler explanation.
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Every Monday morning, the quarterly totals in the shared sales spreadsheet were different from the version Dominic had checked on Friday. Nothing dramatic changed, a few hundred dollars here, a percentage there. Still, it happened often enough that he had started to dread opening the file.
He assumed, at first, that someone was editing the numbers deliberately. Perhaps they wanted their own region to look better before the Monday meeting. It was an uncomfortable thought, and he almost raised it with his manager before he had any real evidence. Although the idea embarrassed him, he decided to check the file's version history instead of accusing anyone.
What he found there surprised him. The edits weren't happening on Monday morning at all. They were being made late on Sunday night, by an account he didn't recognize. When he searched the name, he realised it belonged to Harper, a colleague in the company's other office.
She worked six time zones away, where her Sunday evening was Dominic's early Monday. He messaged her, expecting an awkward conversation. Instead, Harper explained that she had been finishing her own regional report at the same time every week. She had assumed the spreadsheet was hers to update freely, since nobody had told her that Dominic's team used the same file. She said she had been changing formulas to match her region's format, never realising it affected his totals downstream.
Once they understood what was happening, the fix was simple. Harper's numbers were moved to a separate sheet, linked to Dominic's by a formula instead of shared space. That way, each of them could edit their own section without disturbing the other's.
He still felt a little foolish for suspecting sabotage. But he also understood why the pattern had looked so strange. Two people, on opposite sides of the world, had simply been doing their jobs in the same small space. Meanwhile, they had been quietly stepping on each other's work without either one knowing the other existed.
If the two teams had ever been introduced properly, Dominic thought, none of this would have happened. He made a note to suggest exactly that at the next meeting, so a shared spreadsheet wouldn't quietly confuse two strangers again.
