Thanks to everyone who expressed concern about my mental health. The therapy is helping. The white coats say I can leave soon if I don’t get into any more fights. I told John Hinckley that Jodie Foster wasn’t worth shooting a president over. Jennifer Aniston, maybe….. Next time, I might write about my close personal relationship with Jennifer, except for that unfair restraining order thing.
I have busted up bookkeepers pretty well lately. I would be less than fair if I didn’t tell a couple of stories about bookkeepers / company accountants who have surprised me in a positive way.
Sally is the internal bookkeeper for Ralph’s manufacturing company. Sally is a pretty young lady in her early twenties. That was the source of my initial problem with her. Sally took over the job from Shirley, who left to concentrate on the accounting for a company Ralph also owned. Shirley and I had, and still have, a great working relationship. Both of us know what she does well and what areas she leaves for me to clean up. Sally reported to Shirley for a couple of years as an accounts receivable clerk. What that meant in reality was that she did low level grunt work in the accounting department. Go get this, go get that, make the coffee stuff. She prepared some customer invoices and posted customer payments. None of this is rocket science. I had very little interaction with Sally, since I concentrate on the general ledger and financial statements. To me, she was just pretty wallpaper.
Shirley moved to her new job in January. This was not exactly a prime time to switch internal accountants. The year processing was not complete yet. Shirley was available to assist in the year end closing, but her priority was her new job. I was stuck with Sally. During tax season, that didn’t make me happy. By now, you probably know that when I am not happy, I am not a nice person. I am an accounting diva.
Sally got some training from Shirley in working with the general ledger and financial statements, but working with financial statements for the first time isn’t something you learn in a couple of two hour sessions. If I understand correctly, people go to college for four years to try and learn this. Damn few people actually get it that quickly. Sally’s first attempts at closing the company’s books for the year were a mess. The year end financial statements were an absolute abomination. January and February are part of tax season, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to resurrect a set of books that were in decent shape before Sally got the job. I sent a number of borderline nasty e-mails to Ralph. Ok, they were nasty. I won’t lie.
To me Sally was just a cute chick, who was out of her league. Pretty equated with stupid. By now, I am sensing that you have stereotyped me as the typical male chauvinist. Now you have upset me. You are correct, but I am upset nonetheless. Anyway, I should have had the good sense to know better. I am married to a very pretty woman with a master’s degree who works as a computer security engineer. Pretty doesn’t equate with stupid. Instead of working with Sally, I became an obstacle to her getting her job done. I was busy accumulating evidence of her incompetence and relaying it to Ralph. I am not proud of this, but it is what I did.
While I was busy trying to make sense of the company’s books to prepare the income tax returns, a totally unexpected thing happened. As the months went by, I was too busy to pay attention to anything that was happening with the Company’s books in the new year. Finally, in May, I had the tax returns completed for the prior year. I really struggled. After I had sent the tax returns to Ralph, he asked me to take a look at the March financial statements Sally had prepared. Of course, I was really enthusiastic about that task. I would rather spend quality time alone in a bar bathroom with Ben Roethlisberger.
However, when I actually took a look at the March financial statements, they looked pretty accurate. One of the ways I can immediately get a quick evaluation of the quality of financial statements is to look at the balance sheet. Earlier, I gave you the keys to the accounting kingdom. I look at the balance sheet and see if it looks like it could possibly match the amounts in the real world. For instance, I look for debit balances in accounts that should always have credit balances. The March financial statements were perfect, but they easily surpassed what I expected from Sally. Over the period of a couple months, I saw the April and May financial statements prepared by Sally. April was better than March and May was even better than April.
Sally had discovered the keys to the accounting kingdom on her own. She had done this, not just without my help, but in spite of me. Sally had real accounting talent. She began to quiz me about how I reconciled some of the financial statement accounts. Now only did she ask the questions, she absorbed the answers. Not only did she absorb the answers, but she applied the techniques I showed her to other accounts. I was shocked. In fact you could say I was wr….. I just can’t use that word. Ok, I was wrong, absolutely and stupidly wrong. I was at least smart enough at this point to bet on the fastest horse in the race, which wasn’t me. When I next visited the company, I pulled Ralph aside and told him I had been wrong about Sally. I told him I thought she was outstanding. Ralph already knew that. He had seen her talent when she was just an accounting clerk. He knew she was smart enough to take on a difficult job and succeed. Picture me wearing egg all over my face. I could have been the mayor of moron city. I promise to write a thousand times, “I will not equate looks with intelligence.” I will not equate looks with intelligence. Only 998 more times to go. Then we can move on to the next topic. I am certain you have the time to wait…..
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