When the accountants get control

[Griff]

When did this fucking awful phenomenom start? Accountants who have absolutely no people skills get so much power in a company.

An absolutely awful woman has just joined our place and in three weeks has managed to piss off everybody. She's my direct boss too.

She's asked the admin girl in a meeting how many minutes it takes to do stuff. She says she wants to talk to me soon too.

These people should be fucking locked in a room to do their number stuff away from people, or failing that, killed.

 

[ethel]

 

[Hollis]

 

[johnnymarrsbars]

When did this fucking awful phenomenom start? Accountants who have absolutely no people skills get so much power in a company.

An absolutely awful woman has just joined our place and in three weeks has managed to piss off everybody. She's my direct boss too.

She's asked the admin girl in a meeting how many minutes it takes to do stuff. She says she wants to talk to me soon too.

These people should be fucking locked in a room to do their number stuff away from people, or failing that, killed.

its an unfortunate symptom of companies wanting to squeeze every penny at the moment. what such companies fail to realise is that when the recession is over they'll have invested fuck all in talent, capital and development and will be at a huge disadvantage to companies who did.

you have to speculate to accumulate...sadly tons of companies fail to realise this and only look at the short run bottom line. which is ignorant and insanely short sighted.

 

[ethel]

good accountants shouldn't focus on the short run bottom line though!

 

[Dan U]

i am an accountant and i have excellant people skills.

maybe that's why people keep offering me jobs

to be fair a lot of 'management' accountants are quite sociable types.

it's the financial accountants that do balance sheets all day that are all a bit odd imo.

 

[ethel]

as a fellow (trainee) management accountant, i agree

 

[johnnymarrsbars]

good accountants shouldn't focus on the short run bottom line though!

like anything...there's far far more people that are bad at something than are good at something.

 

[marty21]

evil accountant boss will stop internetz

 

[Griff]

evil accountant boss will stop internetz

Could be on the cards.

 

[marty21]

Could be on the cards.

First the came for the internetz, then the coffee and tea, and the MILK! then the biscuits at meetings cigarette breaks tea breaks toilet breaks

 

[Hollis]

I'm scrapping the ubiquotous sandwiches.. utterly absurd.. well, atually my boss is..

Also Christmas meal - let's bring in homemade food.. far more fun.

 

[Griff]

I will go apeshit if she asks me how many minutes I spend on 'tasks'.

 

[marty21]

I'm scrapping the ubiquotous sandwiches.. utterly absurd.. well, atually my boss is..

Also Christmas meal - let's bring in homemade food.. far more fun.

accountants hate Christmas !

 

[Hollis]

Bloody waste of time.. hours sitting around some poxy restaurant - stuck next to people you don't really want to talk to for more than say 1/2 hour, waiting for ultimatly disappointing food to show up.. Load of crap.

 

[marty21]

they haven't got a clue, they come in and want to introduce change for no other reason than they feel the need to put their "stamp" on an organisation, doesn't matter if change is actually needed. I remember in the 90s, most Housing Associations decided that having a single housing officer for a patch of housing was a bad idea, so they split the tasks, arguing that it would be more efficient if tenants went to different members of staff to speak about rent, transfers, neighbour issues, etc...of course accountant man/women we said (well the old salts did) why make one phone call/visit and get your shit sorted, why not make 3 10 years down the line, I hear new management accounts are saying, "you know what, what the tenant/resident/leaseholder/service user/client needs is one person to be their contact at a housing provider, it's more efficient

 

[DRINK?]

i am an accountant and i have excellant people skills.

maybe that's why people keep offering me jobs

to be fair a lot of 'management' accountants are quite sociable types.

it's the financial accountants that do balance sheets all day that are all a bit odd imo.

likewise....management accountants should be far removed from the stereotyped grey number cruncher that springs to mind.....tax accountants do conform to stereotype mind.

The simple fact is that modern day management accountants / accountants understand business, borne out by the fact that something like 80% of CEO's are accountants by trade

 

[berniedicters]

I will go apeshit if she asks me how many minutes I spend on 'tasks'.

No, don't do that. Tell her you'll get back to her and time a few basic tasks. Then go back to her with a list of various tasks and maximum/minimum times to perform them (and TELL her you're adding 50% contingency, because "people prefer that things are earlier than expected, rather than later"), complete with a note saying how long it took you to do the calculation.

The best way is to play these people at their own games. Bury her with numbers. And, for practice, work out how you are going to do the same thing to justify your Internet usage (tip: "research" is always useful, but you have to also offer a few examples of how such research has, eg., enabled you to spend less time on a Task).

I had a boss like this, and we got things to the point where he was spending so much time happily building massive 3-D spreadsheets to record all the lovely numbers we were feeding him that he hardly had any time to ask annoying questions and make irritating, timewasting interventions.

 

[blues]

i am an accountant and i have excellant people skills.

maybe that's why people keep offering me jobs

to be fair a lot of 'management' accountants are quite sociable types.

it's the financial accountants that do balance sheets all day that are all a bit odd imo.

And as for auditors.....

OP It is quite possible the accountant was asking how long it takes to do something so she could accurately "cost" a particular function/project or whatever. If she's been brought in specifically to assess the company's costs, she has to cover all the costs, not just the obvious ones of rent, electricity etc.

Having said that, explaining to people why she needs the info when she asks for it goes a very long way to NOT getting their backs up!

e2a - Who added the "zombie" tag?

 

[Sesquipedalian]

I nearly became an Accountant.

In my second year of ACCA the lecturer posed the question ;

"What would you do if a sole trader came into your office and presented you with a shoebox containing two years of reciepts and announced proudly,
"I have become a Limited Company !"

I was overheard when i thought i had wispered discreetly;

"I'd tell him to fuck off."

Cost accountants are the worst of all accountants.

In answer to the the Op question;
I don't know but i became aware of cost accountants in the late '80s
So way before then ?

 

[blues]

I nearly became an Accountant.

In my second year of ACCA the lecturer posed the question ;

"What would you do if a sole trader came into your office and presented you with a shoebox containing two years of reciepts and announced proudly,
"I have become a Limited Company !"

That's happened to me, only it was a Rice Krispie box. My first words were *laughing my head off* "Great filing system"

Cost accountants are the worst of all accountants.

"Cost accountant" is job role not a profession (IYKWIM) and if that's *all* your role is, it's a living hell. I'd be a right bitch just to share the pain

 

[marty21]

I nearly went down the accountancy route too, at 18 I wanted to go into finance and had a place at Manchester Poly and Leeds Poly to study accountancy and finance I had a change of heart

 

[trashpony]

evil accountant boss will stop internetz

I work at an accountancy firm. Not only do I get internetz but I can download whatever s/w I want to my laptop

Accountants rock

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

jesus christ where the fuckl have you lot been this has been happening for the last 20 years bean counters in industry killed off any chances the UK had to make innovative products and landed us with autsin rover british steel british coal british gas etc etc etc etc 99% of the shit the uk is now in is down to accountants runnign things and the other 1% is down to failed laywers representing their sociopathic accountant pals...

 

[laptop]

I had a boss like this, and we got things to the point where he was spending so much time happily building massive 3-D spreadsheets to record all the lovely numbers we were feeding him that he hardly had any time to ask annoying questions and make irritating, timewasting interventions.

 

[marty21]

I work at an accountancy firm. Not only do I get internetz but I can download whatever s/w I want to my laptop

Accountants rock

damn it, did I make the wrong decision in 1983? I never even told Leeds and Manchester I wouldn't be coming


((((leeds and machester poly)))

 

[laptop]

When did this fucking awful phenomenom start?

I have long held the theory that Margaret Thatcher's actual mission was to put accountants in charge of everything.


Some sort of revenge on the cooler kids of Grantham, I'll wager.

 

[marty21]

I have long held the theory that Margaret Thatcher's actual mission was to put accountants in charge of everything.


Some sort of revenge on the cooler kids of Grantham, I'll wager.

cooler kids in grantham?

 

[Hollis]

I work at an accountancy firm. Not only do I get internetz but I can download whatever s/w I want to my laptop

Accountants rock

Your not at the coal face though - engaged in the daily attritional warfare with budget managers.. fucking idiots! God help us if budget managers ever run anything..

 

[trashpony]

Your not at the coal face though - engaged in the daily attritional warfare with budget managers.. fucking idiots! God help us if budget managers ever run anything..

Oh no, I don't have anything to do with actual number crunchers. They are fucking idiots, indeed