In these frugal times, you may have noticed the lessening frequency of booze fueled get-togethers at your firm. Now that may new associates are/will be joining the number crunching fray soon we’re wondering if we’ll see a possible uptick in social events.
Knocking back some cocktails doesn’t always have the wide appeal in today’s diverse workforce (regardless of what the stats say) but often these fall events are well attended by boozehounds and non-boozehounds alike.
Discuss in the comments the current trend of socializing at your office. Is the culture at your firm or office drying out? Will it get amped up for the incoming staff? One would think that could be impossible judging by activity during this time of year in the past but since layoffs appear to be a bodily function for the firms these days, your celebrations may be occurring with less enthusiasm.
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Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Art of the BF
Editor’s Note: Robert Stewart is a former Big 4 auditor and ex-Marine who has since served in several executive management roles in both Internal Audit and Corporate Finance. He is also the founder and chief contributor to online accounting and audit community, The Accounting Nation. Outside of work, he is a husband, father, brother, writer, and woefully inadequate aspiring triathlete. To learn more about The Accounting Nation, go to http://www.accountingnation.com.
Everything in business these days is focused on teams and teamwork. And yet…in the worlds of accounting and finance…and especially in public accounting…the concept of teamwork often feels like such a joke.
More, after the Jump
There always seems to be that one douche bag that stays too late, gets there too early, inflates chargeability, eats hours, works weekends, foregoes vacation, or does some other trick in an attempt to make everyone else look bad and try to the be the superstar of the game. “Semper Fi…fuck the other guy” as the motto goes. And as a result of his selfish actions, causes everyone else to follow suit in order to compete in the marketplace. It raises the bar higher and higher, costing each person their sanity and ruining their long-term job satisfaction and work/life balance.
I like to call that person the buddy fucker, or BF for short. Every group or team has one. And as Dane Cook would say, “if you can’t think of who that person is on your team…then you ARE that person….I know…its funny because it’s true.” It’s so funny…because it’s so true.
If you could somehow get all parties to agree to a common set of working “rules” or standards, then everyone would be happier. But this, my friends, will never happen…and it’s because of a little thing called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma describes a common strategic situation in game theory whereby two or more opponents in a given “game” must make a strategic decision, absent knowledge about what the other party will do, in order to maximize their individual payoff. Both parties inevitably end up choosing an option which results in a less-than-optimal outcome as a result of his or her lack of certainty about what the other party will do.
In other words, rational players (i.e. your fellow employees and staffers…it’s a stretch of a moniker…I realize) will always BF in order to protect their downside. If you make an agreement with your fellow staffers that nobody will work more than 50 hours per week and that one BF breaks ranks and works 60…everybody else looks like a slacker. So everybody protects their downside by working 60 hours…and everybody is worse off as a result of it. This applies to so many things in life and business…just think about the applications…mind boggling. But guess what…It’s just part of the Game…so get used to it…or get out of it. There’s no dignity in complaining. Accept and move on…
Is Patrick Byrne’s Facebook Friends List Motivated by a Farmville Obsession?
We haven’t really touched on the Patrick Byrne’s ill-fated attempt to stalk his critics (and all their friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers) mostly because we weren’t on the list and those that were (including Gary Weiss, Sam Antar, Joe Wiesenthal, and Barry Ritholtz) are doing a fine job of pointing out how desperate, shady, and just plain fucking bad this makes Patsy, his head minion at DeepCapture Judd Bagley, and Overstock look.
We only bring it up now because we’d like to point out that it’s worth speculating on the other side of this story. Our contention is that P. Byrne, being of questionable mind and maturity, is OBSESSED with Farmville and it is his personal mission to destroy the Farmvilles of his critics and their FB friends (now who’s movin’ up in Farmville, bitches?).
This agonizing torture method will eventually wear down the haters to the point to where no one will be able to take the man, his doomed-to-fail quest to locate an auditor, and his company seriously and will thus give up their quest of destroying him.
The only other thing we can come up with is that he has an intense hatred of trite status updates and was going to expose everyone for their lack of substantive commentary but we find all his critics to be interesting bloggers, so we tossed that theory.
Grant Thornton and PwC have got to feel pret-tay good about how this all turned out. If you’ve got you own theories or thoughts on this situation, feel free to discuss them here.
Your Client Dumps You Because…
Sometimes the reason for your firm getting the boot is pretty obvious and other times it isn’t. Fortunately for you, Tom Hood over at CPA Success lists the top seven reasons that your clients drop you like a sack of rocks and it sounds like the “It’s not you, it’s me” routine:
1. My accountant (CPA) doesn’t treat me right (two-thirds of the responses).
2. CPAs ignore their clients.
3. CPAs fail to cooperate.
4. CPAs let partner contact lapse.
5. CPAs do not keep clients informed.
6. CPAs assume clients are technicians.
7. CPAs use clients as training ground for new staff.
#1 seems a little vague (feel free to elaborate) to us but we’ve definitely seen 2 – 7 in action. We’d go so far to say that #4 and #7 are a little low on the list but that’s just our $0.02. Smaller clients, especially, want just a tiny bit of partner love every once in a while — lunch, bagels, anything! — but sometimes they’re lucky if they get a Christmas card.
Plus there are some clients that hate nothing more than an engagement team that turns over year after year. There’s nothing more annoying than answering the same questions every year by a different 22 year old accountant.
If you’ve got thoughts on, or additions to, the list drop them in the comments and discuss your client dissatisfaction experiences.