Turnabout
I started my accounting career as an auditor. As a “junior” on a crew, I would have to scurry around our clients’ office bugging the crap out of people who had better things to do than provide a business education to a clueless dork who nonetheless felt that his newly minted college degree conferred an exalted status.
We would arrive on a job, meet everyone, and give special strokes to the CFO or Controller, who was often an alumnus (escapee) of our firm. As we worked, we would still stroke the CFO and take him to lunch (in those days, it was ALWAYS a “him”), but it usually became apparent in our quest for real information that the only reliable source was a “Louise” or “Madge”, a superannuated crone who occupied the least desirable real estate in the office, and we would tiptoe past the CFO’s office and besiege her hungrily.
At the end of the job, the bigwigs from our firm would come out and parlez with the CFO and obtain signoff for our work, we’d all shake hands and thank each other and be off to the next stop in the audit gulag.
Well, this week I’ve been the CFO-for-hire at my client’s during their audit, as their controller has had a sort of meltdown and is on extended “leave”. And, despite my desperate attempts to please, I can’t help noticing the auditors busily plying Linda and Alena just outside my door. I can’t say that I blame them, cuz if they came to me, I’d probably put them off and then sneak out and get the answers from Linda and Alena anyway. However, they have yet to buy me lunch.
