Friday, April 29, 2011

Big 4 firm structure

This is kinda old (i.e. still refers to big 5), but still very apt -

The Big 5 Firm Structure
MANAGING PARTNER
Leaps tall buildings in a single bound
Is more powerful than a locomotive
Is faster than a speeding bullet
Walks on water
Gives policy to God

PARTNER
Leaps short buildings in a single bound
Is more powerful than a switch engine
Is just as fast as a speeding bullet
Talks with God

PRINCIPAL
Leaps short buildings with a running start and favorable winds
Is almost as powerful as a switch engine
Is faster than a speeding BB
Walks on water in an indoor swimming pool
Talks with God if a special request is honored

SENIOR MANAGER
Barely clears a quonset hut
Loses tug of war with a locomotive
Can fire a speeding bullet
Swims well
Is occasionally addressed by God

MANAGER
Makes high marks on the walls when trying to leap tall buildings
Is run over by locomotives
Can sometimes handle a gun without inflicting self-injury
Treads water
Talks to animals

SUPERVISING SENIOR
Climbs walls continually
Rides the rails
Plays Russian Roulette
Walks on thin ice

Prays a lot

SENIOR
Runs into buildings
Recognizes locomotives two out of three times
Is not issued ammunition
Can stay afloat with a life jacket
Talks to walls

STAFF
Falls over doorstep when trying to enter buildings
Says "Look at the choo-choo"
Wets himself with a water pistol
Plays in mud puddles
Mumbles to himself

ADMIN PERSONNEL
Lifts buildings and walks under them
Kicks locomotives off the tracks
Catches speeding bullets in their teeth and eats them
Freezes water with a single glance
She/he is God.


(Source unknown)

Friday, April 22, 2011

Getting along with colleagues

12 Tips From a Staff to a Senior/Manager on How to Enhance the Relationship
1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 5:00 and then
bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.

2. If it's really a "rush job", run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to
inquire how it's going. That helps.


3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a
chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.

4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books or supplies, don't open the
door for me. I need to learn to function as a paraplegic and opening doors
is good training.

5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is the
priority. Let me guess.

6. Do your best to keep me late. I like the office and really have nowhere
to go or anything to do.

7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. Leaks like that could cost
me a promotion.

8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular
in conversation.

9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. In
fact, save them until the job is almost done.

10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. When you refer to them
later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.

11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change
your life.


12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to
know someone is less fortunate.


(Source unknown)

Friday, April 15, 2011

Auditing pickup lines

10) Why don't we go back to my place, and I'll let you audit my staff.
9) Wanna sneak out behind the 'hedge' and play with my financial instrument?
8) If I had you, I wouldn't need to use my Handbook.
7) I think we should swap some liquid assets.
6) Take me home tonight, and I guarantee you'll see an extraordinary item.
5) I've been in public practice for several years, and that's easily the largest endowment I've ever seen.
4) Nice 'boot'. Wanna PUC?
3) I'd do just about anything to see your GAAP.
2) Can I put my substance all over your form?
and the #1 worst accounting pick-up line is...
1) So, how do you feel about things in arrears?

Other Notables
"Can we get back together next year for a review engagement?"
"I'm gonna have to make some adjustments to your bottom line."
"Maybe we should go back to your place so you can show me some inside information about your firm structure."
"I think we should introduce a 3rd party to evaluate our standing position."
"If we had a meeting, we wouldn't take 'minutes', we'd take hours!"

"If we get together, I won't have to WACC anymore."
"Trust me, I'm an accountant, I know how to manipulate firm assets."
"I'm so big, you'll consider it at least an arm's length transaction."
"Just because I only have a minority interest, doesn't mean we shouldn't integrate and do a rollover."
"If your sister joined us, we could have one hell of a related party!"
"Your friends should join us so that I could have some comparative figures to manipulate."
"Girl, you meet ALL my criteria, so you better believe I'm gonna capitalize!"
"Take me home, I'm 'assure' thing!"
"Who's your auditor?!?! Who's your auditor?!?!"


(Source unknown)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Demographic Winter (part II)

First sentence of the SRB Documentary, LLC mission statement – “Of all the causes we have in the world today, many of which particularly capture the time and space of the media and academia, it is singularly peculiar that the disintegration of an institution as important as the human family should want for attention.  Perhaps it is because the family is made up of individual people, and we have become a society obsessed with a focus on the self.”  Hmm.  It continues, “ [This documentary] seeks to reawaken society to the importance of the stable, intact family …”
So, wait a minute – instead of gathering data and considering what it might mean, their first priority is to start with a set of values and go looking for data to support those values?  (sarcasm) Well THAT sounds like a fantastic idea.  (/sarcasm)  On top of that, right in their mission statement they diagnose the problem – “we have become a society obsessed with a focus on the self.”  What fantastic mindreaders they must be!
So, when they depict all cohabiting couples as disappointed women who look on while the men play video games and ignore them (selfish people!), surely this is based on data, right?  Not so much.  Such is the desperation to advertise traditional values that they need to put the worst possible face on something like cohabitation.  No consideration of the fact that the quality of cohabiting relationships is as wide and varied as the individuals engaged in them.  Not unlike that marriage thing which is so widely promoted by social conservatives. 
Oh but surely the trend of delayed marriage and childbearing is caused by selfishness, no?
May I point out that most young people don’t feel ready for marriage?  Not because they are selfish, but because they are aware of and frightened by the enormity of the commitment involved in marriage and having kids.  Plus, most people are not in a financial position to marry young.  You know those college degrees?  The ones that let us earn enough money to actually support a family?  Yup, the very same.  Guess what?  Those things are EXPENSIVE.  We spend a LOT more time than our parents did getting our financial footing.  Who in their right mind is going to choose to marry and have a baby when they are young?
The documentary also astutely points out that after women entered the workforce, the opportunity cost for women to have children increased dramatically – e.g., foregone income, foregone career advancement, etc.  As a result, women choose to have fewer kids.  And that’s a bad thing?  This is probably the one area where I think they have their causes and effects in order.  But they neglect to mention, of course, that if there weren’t so many men who continue to abdicate responsibility as the breadwinner, and in fact abuse the powerful status they have in relationships as the breadwinner, not as many women would be so driven to have a back-up plan.  If my first husband hadn’t decided for me that I didn’t need a place to live … in the winter … in interior Alaska … with a baby … well, you get the picture.  If none of that had happened I myself would probably be a stay-at-home mom with a handful of kids.  I would have finished my degree, but I would have been a stay-at-home mom.  As it is, I am the breadwinner in my family.  Which reminds me – the stay-at-home parent is now a gender-neutral position.  If a woman’s opportunity cost is too high, it is an option for the husband to stay home.  So why the single-minded focus on a woman’s  opportunity cost?  Almost as if they want to pin the blame for all of this on women.  Remember the neglectful live-in boyfriend above?  It’s her fault.  Because she didn’t follow 1950’s relationship conventions.  /eyeroll
Discussion of “the way it ought to be” in part III ….

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Demographic Winter I

Over Thanksgiving I watched the documentary Demographic Winter.  Here is their website:
I recommend around the first 20 minutes or so, if you get a chance.  That’s the part where they actually support their idea that we are headed for a huge population decline in the next several decades.  The remainder is kinda worthless, in my opinion – pointless speculation about the decline of the modern family and the whys and wherefores.  Don’t get me wrong – they have the data to say, in no uncertain terms, what has been happening to the family; but that’s where the facts end and the speculation begins.  From there they take the what (which the data supports), add some traditional values-inspired speculation, and they arrive at a completely unsupportable why, as well as a completely unsupportable what it all means.
One brilliant gentleman, Harry Dent, points out that when you take a graph of birth rates, and a graph of stock market levels, shift the birth rate graph to fifty years later and superimpose it over the stock market graph, you get a pretty good match of activity trends.  We can only guess why this is, but his explanation does make sense – the idea that when people reach ~50, they prepare for retirement and essentially take their money out of the economy.  Then, consider that virtually every country has a birth rate below replacement.  A + B = future population and economic decline.
Well, that was enough for me – any economic theory presupposes the existence of agents to act in that economy.  No agents, no economy.  Decline in economic agents = certain economic decline.  I was convinced!  They could have, and should have, ended it right there.  But no, they had to keep going.

(Continued in part II)

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Auditing, WoW, and You (II)

Every new day of auditing is like the Eye of Eternity whirlwind all over again –
Glossary –
Turn in the quest – submit for review
Chain quest / follow-up quest – review notes
Down the boss – complete the audit
Audit hits the enrage timer – do I have to define this one?
Got run through an instance – good set of prior year workpapers
But you still pull agro - … but you fail anyway
Roflpwned – Dual-purpose tested and found controls to be effective and no differences found

Monday, April 4, 2011

Advice columnist needs advice (part I of many, I'm sure)

So I read the Dear Prudie chat on www.slate.com today.  The letter I am concerned with at the moment appear (here).  Below is the letter and response in its entirety, followed by Prudie’s response again, interjected with my comments.
Q. Clueless Husband: This past Wednesday was my husband and my 10th wedding anniversary. I had saved for two months (I only work part time for "my" spending money, so I don't make much) to buy him a watch and then had it engraved with a personal message. I had told him several times (because he asked) that I was purchasing a somewhat expensive gift. I made a wish list at our local jewelry store where I purchased the watch and told him that I did so. We both had brought up our anniversary over the last few weeks and what we should do; we never made any concrete plans. So when the big day arrived, my rather expensive, well-thought-out, personal gift was met with a $50 gift card to a place I like to shop (he gave me the same thing for Christmas), which he purchased two hours earlier along with the card. We have plans to go out of town this weekend to stay at a hotel and go out to dinner, but I made these plans. I guess my question is, should I tell him how hurt I am? In the past, he has said that I'm hard to buy for, but since I made a wish list, I don't feel like that would be an excuse. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I really can't get over how much his gift said "I don't care." I should add that I know he loves me, he tells me every day, and his "gift-giving" skills fluctuate, but I really expected more for such an important milestone.

A: I know what you mean because for our 10th anniversary, my husband forgot. But it didn't hurt too much, because so did I. When we remembered, we decide to celebrate with a belated anniversary dinner. We've been married 16 years, and we still haven't scheduled it.
There are gift people, then there are "Oh my God, it's our anniversary, I gotta get my wife something today!" people. You say your husband tells you he loves your daily and you seem to have no other complaints about him. He didn't forget your anniversary, he got you a perfectly fine gift. If you wanted a specific piece of jewelry, given his proclivities, you probably should have gone to the jewelry store together and chosen gifts for each other. Yes, it would be less romantic, but you wouldn't be left feeling dissed. And as thoughtful and caring as your gift was, maybe he sees it as somewhat foolish. If you have to save for two months to buy a watch, there are better ways to spend your money.
Surely there are things about you your husband wishes were different, but he shrugs them off. That's what I think you should do about your anniversary. And for the next one, don't expect him to respond to heavy hints about what you want. Take him by the hand, point to the jewelry case, and say, "That one."

And my comments:

“A: I know what you mean …”

Oh?

“because for our 10th anniversary, my husband forgot.”

At this moment, I am picturing a cozy scene of two women providing empathy and emotional support over a hot, tasty espresso drink.

“But it didn't hurt too much, because so did I.”

Oh.  I see.  So you really don’t know what she means, because you have zero empathy for something that is a priority to her. 

Hmm, what?  Oh, that!  That’s the sound of the aforementioned cozy sisterly-love picture shattering all over the floor.  Excuse me for a minute while I get the vacuum cleaner and clean it up …

“When we remembered, we decide to celebrate with a belated anniversary dinner. We've been married 16 years, and we still haven't scheduled it.”

I really, truly, am happy for you that you both are so chill. Please don’t let my normally sarcastic tone convince you of anything other than my absolute sincerity on this item.  But the mission-critical element here is that you and your husband are very matched up in this regard, while the letter-writer and her husband are not.  Your personal anecdote is neither relevant nor helpful to the letter-writer.

“There are gift people, then there are "Oh my God, it's our anniversary, I gotta get my wife something today!" people. You say your husband tells you he loves your daily and you seem to have no other complaints about him.”

I do appreciate the dose of perspective here, but to be honest, the fact that the letter-writer describes her husband in these glowing terms tells me that she already has a sense of perspective.

 “He didn't forget your anniversary, he got you a perfectly fine gift.”

Um, no.  He didn’t.  Hence the letter-writer’s letter.

“If you wanted a specific piece of jewelry, given his proclivities, you probably should have gone to the jewelry store together and chosen gifts for each other. Yes, it would be less romantic, but you wouldn't be left feeling dissed.”

… Isn’t that what she did? The woman gave her husband a wishlist.  She has met him 99.99% of the way, and she wants your advice in getting him to go that last 0.01% to meet her in the (sort of) middle.  Really not too much to expect.

“And as thoughtful and caring as your gift was, maybe he sees it as somewhat foolish. If you have to save for two months to buy a watch, there are better ways to spend your money.”

If that’s the way he sees it, then he is the fool.  His wife painstakingly saved her money over time (rather than make an irresponsible impulse purchase, the kind we are ALL guilty of on occasion), took her time, and selected a classy, beautiful, personalized gift.  In what universe is such consideration, devotion, and effort foolish?

“Surely there are things about you your husband wishes were different, but he shrugs them off.”

Maybe, maybe not.  If that’s the case, then that’s his bad.  It’s up to him whether or not things that are issues on his end are worth the time and effort to discuss.  However, none of this is relevant to the letter-writer or her situation.  She has identified an issue that she feels is worth it to her to have resolved, and she discusses it calmly, rationally, and respectfully.  She deserves better from you.

“That's what I think you should do about your anniversary. And for the next one, don't expect him to respond to heavy hints about what you want. Take him by the hand, point to the jewelry case, and say, "That one." “

Again – overall, this woman is not asking for the moon.  She knows her husband, and she is not expecting him to meticulously plan a surprise romantic date or getaway.  She really did her best to get him to work within his capabilities and give her just a little bit of the romance that she is perfectly entitled to want.  What she needs from you is not a “be like me or give up what you want” letter, she needs you to give her an idea of how to bridge this gap with her husband.  Just because you have no desire for or interest in romance does not mean that another woman’s legitimate emotional need should go unfulfilled.

On the off-chance that Ms. LetterWriter sees this, here is my advice for you:

Yes, you should tell him how hurt you are.  You did a fantastic job here of articulating exactly what you expected and how you communicated your expectations, what he did and how it made you feel, but also that you love him very much and recognize that overall he is a wonderful husband.  You can probably copy+paste what you wrote into your conversation, but put the positive stuff first, of course.  When he understands, give him an opportunity to make it up to you – at your next birthday, major or minor holiday.  Maybe even pick a day and make it your own holiday.  If you are on good terms with his friends and/or family, enlist their help in prodding him.  If even that doesn’t work, you may need to either step it up to counseling, or perhaps (and I dread to suggest this, but as a last resort it may be just what you need) withhold something that makes him feel loved.  After a short time, ask him how he feels, and remind him that’s how you feel when he appears to ignore a simple request that would make you very happy.  I hope that you get what you need.

In closing, bless you.  You are a saint.  I am a relative newlywed compared to you, but I have a similar struggle with an otherwise wonderful husband (but I imagine that was obvious).  Reading your thoughts and seeing your patience and appreciation of your husband is really very humbling, and I hope someday to both have your level of patience and not lose sight of how incredible my husband really is.

Good luck, and feel free to write.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Requiem aeternam dona eis

Today is the 6th anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II.  I remember when I heard that he had died – I cried.  He was a great Pope, and there is something very painful about losing such a significant figurehead – the leader of the Church.  Up to that point, he was the only Pope I had known in my lifetime – that kinda hit me.
So, in memoriam – God rest your soul, your Holiness.

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