So here I am crouched over in front of my laptop on the last Saturday of 2018 when I should be outside on my bike enjoying the unseasonably warm Richmond temps. Why? Well, partially because I convinced Bramwell publishing this post on the weekend rather than on a Friday would be a good idea, but also because the nature of my work means sometimes I work nights and/or weekends so I can have weekdays to myself to fuck off on Fallout 76 clean my apartment and run errands. Yeah, that’s it.
The other reason I decided to throw this together today and not, say, Thursday during “normal” working hours is that the people to whom it’s aimed know all too well what it feels like to be working when you should be biking/drinking/playing buggy online multiplayer games. So, I’m with you in solidarity or something.
A few years back, I wrote a post about terrible inventory counts, one that was written with help from Redditors who didn’t hesitate to share their stories. Five years have passed since I wrote that piece of garbage, and while the counters may be different, the counting remains the same.
For new auditors, the year-end inventory count is something of a hazing, except instead of alcohol poisoning you may get human body parts and/or sub-zero Nebraska warehouses. Fun! The best part is that these critical counts are usually completed by wide-eyed, bushy-tailed first-years who have yet to be jaded by the pointlessness of their existence as their remaining faith in humanity is slowly leeched out by the PCAOB. Instead of spending time with their families like normal people, they’re wandering the client site clipboard in hand with absolutely no clue what they’re doing because that’s what first-years did last year and the year before and the year before that.
We love a good horror story around these parts, so if you missed out on sharing five long years ago, now is your chance to drop your worst inventory count story. Friendly reminder, you’ll have to top the following:
- Counting sandpaper at 8 a.m. the morning after his bachelor party.
- Counting cakes in a -20 degree industrial freezer with a pencil because pen ink would freeze in those temps.
- Counting meat carcasses “in a room with 4.5 million pounds of skinned, decapitated cows with many interesting byproducts on the ground.”
- Counting chemicals in the mud with a tropical storm on the way.
- Counting bull jizz (yeah, that one still isn’t quite confirmed but we’ve all heard it).
And to think, the worst thing I’ve had to do at my job is hold off on drinking until 1 p.m. because we had a late morning conference call.
Inventory counts may be awful but let’s be honest, it gives you guys way better stories than anyone in tax will ever be able to tell. I doubt they can say they roamed two football fields’ worth of slowly rotting dead animal for work.
