Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Dang, in a couple of hours I’m going to be dragged kicking and screaming into October. And the weather is doing nothing to ease the transition - it’s turned from the benevolent warmth and sunshine of the previous post to a mean-spirited rain siege that forced us, finally, to turn the heat on today for the first time, I believe, since spring.

It’ll be another brisk work week. Month-end stuff added to regular workload. Here’s an amusing bit, though -Two of my clients have experienced bookkeeper turnover. For one, we have run ads, contacted personnel firms, done scripted behavioral interviews and had people complete testing. After 2 - 3 weeks of this endeavor, we have one candidate that we have only a lukewarm interest in, and we’re about to repeat the entire process this week with new ads, etc.

The other client precipitously hired a young woman that a friend of the owner met in a bar, where she was working as a server. She has a newly-minted accounting degree, but absolutely no work experience. When I arrived to give her some training, I smelled the perfume first, then saw the petite blond sitting there. I thought, “Cool!” and “Oh, no!” simultaneously, and steeled myself for the worst. To my delight and relief, she was very attentive, took meticulous notes and, most importantly, displayed good instincts for both accounting issues and the accounting software. That’s been the only training session she’s needed so far, though I’ll return for month-end and see how much clean-up has to be done. Turned out she just hated working in the bar, and embraced the opportunity to start working in her field.

Ya never know. I’ve hired my share of doozies (current readers excepted, of course!), enough to be fairly humble about my ability to judge accounting horseflesh. I’d much rather recruit over margaritas than resumes and cover letters, and I might not do any worse.

Have a good week, folks, I’ll be in touch.