Mass Update Negative Integet

Mass Update Negative Integet

I've created a customer field of type integer.  I now would like to select appropriate records and do a mass update to a negative value.  The system doesn't allow me to.   I can open each record individually and set them one by one to a negative number.  But mass update does not work.
 
Error message is, "Please enter a valid (field_name)"
 
Any advice?