Oscar Fail

It seems a simple enough task. Tally votes, print each winner’s name onto a card, and put each card into an envelope. For each award, hand the proper envelope to the presenter. How do you screw that up? The accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers managed to do it.

PwC says they are working to find out how it happened. That shouldn’t be hard. It’s not like a jet airliner crashed in the rainforest and we have to figure out which of a bazillion things went wrong. When handing out award envelopes there are a limited number of ways to fail.

Imagine you work for PwC and here’s your job: put the card for Best Picture into the Best Picture envelope, and when the show gets to the Best Picture category, hand that envelope to the presenter. Most people would presume that if a third-grader can do it, an international accounting firm should be able to do it.

This begs the question, did someone at PwC outsource the job to a third-grader? I envision an accountant sitting behind a desk and thinking, “I’m not going to waste my time stuffing cards into envelopes. I’ll take this stuff home and let my 8-year-old do the work. It’s so simple, what could go wrong?”

Sure. What could go wrong?

Perhaps next year the Academy should hire an actual third-grader to hand out the envelopes. If a third-grader screws up, people will just shrug and say, “Well, that’s what happens when you hire a third-grader.” The screw-up won’t be so epic. And bonus: a third-grader would do the job much cheaper than an international accounting firm. In fact, the Academy could probably pay him with Kit Kat bars and he’d be perfectly happy. I’m pretty sure PwC won’t do the job for Kit Kat bars. Although after this year’s Oscar fail, a case of Kit Kat bars seems more than sufficient payment.