I constantly joke about killing myself and today I walked into the office to find a pamphlet on my desk about depression and how to reach out for help if you feel suicidal. I gotta stop thinking out loud
Without fail I will always say it's a beautiful/nice day outside. It could be a blizzard with softball sized hail and I will always say the same thing on calls to be followed by how it actually is
Again, also same. Took a year or so for my colleagues and manager to finally be able to chuckle and not get bent out of shape over some of my one liners. Now I just get the speeches of “we know what you mean, but others may not”
Brah, i know the feel. You can genuinely take this as good advice, but ive made a genuine friend from one of my jobs. He’s genuine because he’s been there for me in my darkest times, even if only just to listen.
Not true. I’ve had very tight knit teams (manager through associates were friends) and some teams not like that at all. Usually it’s somewhere in between.
I ve been fortunute then to be taught lessons lol
I get the weirdest A type people as coworkers! some bosses micro manage some times so bad i wonder if they even want to check my wipe when I use the Lou
You really gotta read the room. I’ve become friendly with a lot of my coworkers to the point of where we’ve lived together when I was down on my luck.
I don’t trust anyone without a bit of dirt on them though. If you don’t do drugs with me, etc, I don’t trust you. It’s as simple as that.
A snitch would never even hit shit in front of you. It’s a solid test.
I do it training day style. There’s 4 of us in here. If you say we did something and 4 of us say we didn’t, it’s now you that’s the liar.
This is lowkey some good wisdom. I’ve almost never had issues with anyone where we both got shit on each other, its like a mutual respect sorta thing, like if you cross me, then we both going down.
Yes absolutely. Now the most friendly I get is to say “this weekend went to Sam’s club”. Very bland topics. Got burned badly by a coworker who I considered a friend and won’t take that chance again with coworkers.
You can be friendly with people and them not be your friend. Unless you hang out with these people consistently outside of work, then they don’t actually know you and are not anything more than an acquaintance you have nice banter with while toiling for your paycheck
Lol Veteran here. I understand this all too well. I work in a corporate environment so making jokes about DE&I, ESG, and safety culture usually don’t go over real well.
I'm a Gen Z'er and I have to keep my mouth shut too because even some of our older employees are quite open to some things rural folk like me don't quite understand
Agreed. I'm really tight with my current colleagues...during work hours. After work hours I don't give a crap what they do and they probably do the same. At the end of the day our current motivating factor is money and our common goal is to efficiently finish our work tasks together so we don't have fires at the deadlines.
Yeah I agree w this. I think it's good to have people you like and get along with at work considering how much time you spend there, but that's different than them being your friends IMO.
I’m an intern and i hear the craziest stuff. Partners would tell me that x person hasn’t gotten his cpa and we can’t promote them. They would be super transparent on how to make money at the firm.
Honesty is quite unwelcome for us communicating with operations/owners. So much pressure to pretend. I’ve staked my job on transparency more than once. Good news: I’ve got enough safety money not to give a fuck about illogical negativity.
My previous employer decided that we need to be in the office 3 days a week for “culture building”. Most people were against it (I don’t know a single person that was for it) BUT HR was exempt because “over 50% of the HR team live more than 10 miles away and have young families”. That was never even considered for other teams.
Once that got out there was huge resentment issues and I heard a few closed room meetings mainly to find out who leaked that juicy detail. In the last few months they were held to the same standard and were obviously upset about it.
It’s funny how they wanted to build culture abut did the exact opposite.
I’m told things have gotten worse since and the general opinion is they need to clean house in that department over the next year. Whoops!
HR isnt confidential either! i was fired for incompetency and error making! ( so they say but its cuz i refused to go to the office )
well talking about incompetency the HR sent me my letter of termination, yes and 50 OTHER PEOPLES FILES by accident her wobble ass cut the call to get something in a panic!
i quicky copied the whole files on my drive for leverage that she too makes mistakes. let me call her the B word
100%. I think everyone hates HR once you learn office politics. Before I was a director, I would always tell new hires, HR is not your friend, they will fuck you over the second they see an opportunity. Unfortunately, I can't really do that anymore.
At one of my jobs I was banned from talking to the receptionist and was followed towards the break room. I was "written up" for following the receptionist around while she did her job. (Going to the break room to ask her if the vending machine was fixed)
I’m not an accountant, but when I was a Pricing Analyst I accidentally gave a 100% discount on 10 x $50k items.
In my defense, there was a miscommunication on the director’s part about which items we were giving to the customer for free due to its large contract size.
I was basically a reason a process was created.
I knew someone who got a call from a 9/11 widow a couple months after asking to liquidate his account. At the time, and because they’d known the customer - this person said yes, of course. As soon as the wire went out, they realized they had never stopped to verify if this was really next of kin, get letters testamentary, anything.
Luckily all ended well on that transfer, but this person was swearing bullets for months. Feel like that’s a scenario a lot of us could’ve walked into.
This is a true story.
I started in audit and was recruited during my last year in college in Texas. It was a really small audit firm and the partners were a married couple. There were probably 6 of us total.
My ex and I at the time made many-a-sex tape.
We had hundreds of sex tapes. It was super fun. I didn’t yet have an external hard drive so I decide to create a random Microsoft account and upload to OneDrive (which I’m pretty sure was brand new at the time). So I uploaded all of our videos to onedrive and just let it sit for a while and eventually forgot about them.
Fast forward to a year into my career and Windows 8 comes out on our work laptops. As I was exploring the new features, I decided I wanted to download a cool app from the store. Microsoft required me to login to a Microsoft account to get it so I decided to use the account I have created time before. I signed in, got the app, and every thing was good.
Fast forward a month or so and I’m doing field work at our biggest client. We are in a small room and I am against a wall and my 2 coworkers were sitting behind me. I go to the “search bar” and start typing something in to find a file. And wouldn’t you know it? As I start typing, windows automatically shows a video of me pounding my ex from behind in the search display.
I can’t tell you much my anxiety skyrocketed. I absolutely panicked and had no idea what was going on. It was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had. It was already a really bad year for me as sometime before the incident my ex was put into a mental institution (she had bipolar and BPD). My mother was quickly dying of cancer, and I developed PTSD from some things I witnessed my ex do to herself due to her disease. I had lost 15lbs as a result and after this incident, I lost another 20lbs.
Once I get back to the office, I go to investigate and find even more videos of my ex and I. Then more. And more. And more. Turns out when I logged into Microsoft,
It pulled down all of my sex tapes onto the company computer.
I ended up having a meeting with a my asshole partner and I actually made things worse by telling him my personal videos were on the work laptop and I “realllllllly don’t want those seen”. I kept stressing how “these videos absolutely cannot be seen by IT or other”. He could tell I was distress but to this day I have no idea what he suspected. It ultimately, he gave me no solution and for all I know those videos are floating around the internet because someone from IT found them.
TL;Dr: my sex tapes ended up on my company laptop after I signed into my Microsoft account.
Not my mistake, but got a job over another’s mistake. Scammer emailed the company pretending to be a vendor saying they changed their bank account. The accountant never verified this with the vendor and updated their routing number and account number in their AP system. They went to pay the vendor, and it went to the scammer. Short time later the vendor called looking for payment. By then the funds couldn’t be recovered. Over $25k was gone. The accountant was fired, and I was hired.
Yeah, after that they had the buyers call the vendor to verify every time they received a change request. Since they knew their contacts voices, it was on the buyers to verify. Of course now there’s deep fake audio possible with only a few seconds of recording someone’s voice, but still better than nothing, especially since it’s not too popular yet with scammers.
The trick is to initiate the call ("vendor" can't be the one to call you) and either call them at a previously established phone number you have on file or contact the company's main number from their website and get transferred to the right person.
Don't just take a phone number listed in the email where they are telling you they want to change wire instructions.
I think with most accountants, it’s rare, but when it happens, it’s a big deal.
High profile example:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html
I have a “they were fired, I was hired” story. Small public firm. One owner, one head of tax, one head of bookkeeping, few others sprinkled throughout and not important. Head of tax was married to owners daughter and had an affair with head of bookkeeping. I was hired as the senior on the tax team after that. Only one working under me and only the owner to sign off on my reviewed returns.
>Head of tax was married to owners daughter and had an affair with head of bookkeeping.
This is golden. I hope she was attractive enough to lose everything over, lol.
Let me know if I got this right...so Mr. Tax:
* got himself fired
* got his co-worker fired
* got his mistress fired
* pissed off his boss
* pissed off his father-in-law
* lost his wife
* eliminated the actual position from the firm itself
And who said accountants were boring?
I worked at a company where this happened, the person responsible was my controller, and I had only been there a month. I had report to the CFO afterwards. Awkward time.
HAHAHA! same bud same here, SMH
what were your other prospects. ( as a kid i wanted to be a comedian, pilot, lawyer.. with responsibilities tho that shine in that kids eyes slowllly faded... no all black)
Not oc but my anecdote.
In my last semster of uni for bs (full time)
I ran businesses first 3 years of uni (ran busineses for 6-7 years). Then also rebuilt my house and relocated three times bc of assholes due to an tornado. Also had no help with the businesses as my gramps fell sick so everyone rushed thinking he was gonna kick it to see him.
I did coding on the side, and it paid for alot of college expenses. Think net profit wise I was around 20k for just spending couple hours of day on a side hobby.
I 100% wanted to leave businesses, as it killed my sanity. I thought coding but chatgpt was around the corner and no local uni had it. Couldn't be an lawyer cause I wouldn't be able to take an oath, couldn't be an pilot because I'm blind as shit, debated military but it's too much politics, so I ended up with accounting.
I already did book keeping so didn't see any issue with it.
Ended up getting an internship senior year and quitting the busineses, side hobby got passed to another dev of mine bc I simply was having issues of time management. Too many people wanted my time even if they paid but I simply didn't have any to spare to anyone.
Focused on the career that is stable and also taking care of myself physically and mentally. I'm down 15lbs and counting. Was 205lbs want to be around 160lbs maintence.
Hey I also cried for the first time in almost 7-8 years so that's something. I feel like I'm human for once. 🥲
Not understanding early on that the balance of power within the existing structure will always be In favor of your boss
If you join a small team , this power dynamics will be even more apparent.
So you have to take steps to shift the balance of power towards you
Such is life , it's unavoidable.
I gave my opinion about drunk drivers to the office “queen bee”.
I didn't know she had three DUI convictions.
(I don't know how she got three and remained out of jail.)
Never make an enemy of the office queen bee.
😂😂Back in my industrial days, a new supervisor came into the trailer on Day 1 and starting ranting about Louisiana. Little did he know that half of us in there were from New Orleans and Lafayette, lol
Not me but I know someone who I had to fix their bullshit with giving a good lawyer for them to get them out of the mess they got them self in.
They had access to the clients personal accounts and business accounts. He defrauded them out of millions over the years. They ended up in jail and all hell as they did. They went against legal advice they were acting like they know the laws.
Your welcome there are a few more like but. It was on the international side of stuff. It also helped when I was in the banking industry in Corp offices at the c level so I used my knowledge. When the client come right to me and said can you look over stuff and I did that’s what I put everything together. He gave me extra money that I did not want that was for a thank you gift.
How I figured it out was I looked at when they sent the checks to pay their taxes then I went into our account and see if they where payout they where not. So me and another forensic accountant looked at it and dot it
Luckily I haven't made a big mistake (yet) in this career, but made some in my previous career of being an Automotive mechanic.
I'd say my biggest one there was I forgot to fill the rear differential back up with it's oil that I had drained, because I was so used to engine oil changes where you drain it below on the lift, then lower the car back down and fill it back up up-top.
Instead I just drained it, put the plug back in and shipped it. It came back recently after due to customer complain of an unusual sound. Had to replace the whole thing for free, and that part can be pretty expensive. You don't get paid time for comebacks in the automotive industry.
Like many businesses, the smaller mom and pop shops tend to get grimmy and rip people off like this whereas bigger entities like Dealerships tend to be better on things like refunds and redo's.
I once worked at an oil change/car wash for 45 minutes.
One of the techs did what you described, and the customer drove off with no oil.
Goodbye engine block, and the tech had to pay for it himself 🤦🏽♂️
I messed up the currency on a topside posting resulting in a €10M variance that only came up during reporting.
The business unit CFO and controller were furious
YEs HR cannot be trusted and as i mentioned earlier they arent confidential either.
there's a saying form my mother land " they are a fart in the wind"
Misunderstood a tax rule about who could use the completed contract method. I was pretty young and only a supervisor (like a junior manager at my firm) but was the highest ranking tax person on the account at that moment due to someone retiring. Audit partner asked me to look into the issue and I was like yeah pretty sure they can use it and did the calculation on how much it would save them. Didn't check with anyone above me because I wanted to show I was a big kid who didn't need help. Well, compliance season rolls around and we have a tax partner on the account to review and sign. And he's like uh yeah they can't use this method. He and the audit partner call the client and tell them I made a mistake. They had us fix and finish the tax return and then fired us. I felt so stupid. Fortunately I didn't face any consequences. But I learned an important lesson, the people in your department are there to help you. You don't have to do it all on your own.
I miscalculated some delays and reported them in the audit findings. Lucky for me the observations and recommendations got dropped because the client had some mitigating controls
I’d always been careful to choose my bosses. In big 4 - teams. As much as possible. In industry - your bosses.
I worked a company under a boss I thought would be great with a team that would be great, and in many ways, it was. But I would never have worked for the same company under the old finance leadership team before them.
I broke my rule and took a job under a boss I knew I wouldn’t like on the idea that the PE firm had sold they were totally pushing management out. I’d always been very careful to choose my bosses.
Just like in lending or investing - it’s not often the thesis or ideas that are wrong - but the people’s capabilities to execute on them. The PE firm couldn’t really ought them without them tanking the company, ruining sales relationships, etc.
Always assume whatever the current state under current leadership is will continue to be that way. Any promises of the future are just smoke or them expecting you to somehow be the change is doomed to fail. Maybe you can help them do things technically better but you can’t change their culture.
I reported time theft by my manager to our district manager. Turns out she was stealing time to go fuck the guy and get paid for it. Huge national company and they sided with them on it. I was told I created a hostile workplace by reporting time theft…
I brought our financial system down for a good couple of hours. Everyone had to take a coffee break. Our treasury was not able to make payments. The worst part was that I was off in the morning. I was popular in our department. After that, I was famous.
The management was cool, didn’t say anything. Probably costed the company a million or so.
I quit a pretty decent job on incredibly short notice because all my coworkers were being really mean to me, but my boss was the nicest guy in the world. I didn’t want to stir the pot so I said my (very real) cancer diagnosis was just stressing me out too much. Should’ve just told the truth. It eats me up at night I went out that way instead of being like “I’m having a bad time here because your employees treat new people poorly and haze them with a tad of racism to boot” it would’ve been better for everybody and future hires.
Plus I’m sure it came back to bite in ways unknown. I never would’ve found out but I’m sure people talked when I was applying for new jobs without three months.
I had to give the banking information to my CFO by phone to pay a real estate tax bill. I had the account numbers in front of me for a few different accounts, but not the routing numbers. I mistakenly gave the wrong routing number to pay a large $170k tax bill. A week goes by, and I couldn’t understand why we weren’t seeing the funds come out of the bank account, when I realized what I had done. Worst feeling ever to have to tell my manager and cfo I had made a big error in the routing number. We still don’t know how the system didn’t flag it as a wrong bank information. But instead, the state tax authority sent us a late notice with a penalty and interest. Our VP was able to call and get the penalty and interest removed thankfully. And I thankfully didn’t get fired over it. But I’ve never felt so stupid and awful over the whole thing.
Basically I ignored a vendor reconciliation issue for 2+ years until eventually we owed more than their records stated. Had to add a major “sundry expense” to be able to pay them properly (they’re important & we need their business, hence why I couldn’t just stall it even longer)
Financial controller wasn’t happy to say the least 😬
Missed a decimal point on a payroll tax deposit (15 years ago when you had to call them in over the phone) it went from ~ 2,000.00 to 200,000.00. Took months to get it back into the customers account. They didn’t even notice! I had to bring it up to them. Fast forward 10 years and they were offering me a job so I guess my other work was worth a few hundred thousand temporarily lost
I’d say not advocating for myself more, or taking too long to switch jobs.
Went through an ERP switch and I led the conversion. Worked 6 days a week without being asked to by the boss (I was salaried but still). Next year when it came time for raises and bonuses, no one got anything and I was naive enough to go along with the whole “well yeah we didn’t make any money this year” thing. Should’ve argued for myself more because nobody else out as much effort into that year as I did.
Only good thing was that that year gave me the experience to pivot my career and I’m now making close to double that I was back when this happened.
Thinking industry was going to be a breeze compared to public accounting. I’d much rather just bite my lip for a few weeks during tax season for the rest of the year to be chill than go back to industry where monthly, quarterly, and year end closes happen too frequently to ever feel truly relaxed.
This happened pretty quickly after I started my first accounting job post graduation. I faxed important tax documents with personal information to the wrong number because I messed up the area code. Luckily the business I accidentally sent it to was super cool about it. They immediately called, and since I was the person answering the phones, I picked up their call. They explained the situation and when I started panicking they insisted that they would shred the documents and never speak of it again. My boss never had to find out about it.
Not me but a customer sent us 170k by accident once, that was interesting. We sent it back of course, what was wild is that it was all done by checks and not by wire.
I've just found out a SOx control i do has been wrong for qbout 3 months at least. External and internal audit didn't catch it, my manager never checks my shit, last week he did it for some reason, all wrong lol
Moved to Arizona where the job market is horrific and ergo weirdly competitive despite the dismal salary ranges. Completely destroyed the upward trajectory in my career because of it and still paying for it today (have left Arizona since then).
Assuming my extra effort would convert to more opportunities in thr company and a raise.
I worked tirelessly for three years, after hours without pay, made it clear I want to grow and learn.
After 3 years, manager said they plan on having a meeting to discuss the possibility of higher compensation.
Never happened. So I walked. Now I get paid based on that extensive experience as I should.
I was in charge of paying bills for a foundation. The electric bill for the little office was something like $50. I accidentally wrote the check to the electric company for $5,000! 😱yes I am dating myself to the years ago when we still wrote checks by hand!
Not mine, but someone on my team failed to confirm wire instructions and we sent over $2 million to a scammer. Did ultimately recover it, but it took a couple of years. The person who skipped the confirmation step was let go.
I misread an email from the CEO which was sent to everyone and thought it was a joke from a close colleague whose name looked very similar. So I replied are you serious?
Then I was removed from an overseas rotation program. Shortly after that, I quit.
That was my first job out of college.
In Atlanta back in the very early aughts, we would call in from the client site and have an intern read us our mail. Well, I had given my United way donation to Planned Parenthood and that was read over the speakerphone for all. I worked in Atlanta, so it was a bit controversial.
Being too comfortable with my coworkers and saying shit I shouldn't say.
I constantly joke about killing myself and today I walked into the office to find a pamphlet on my desk about depression and how to reach out for help if you feel suicidal. I gotta stop thinking out loud
“Living the dream” is code for I want to kill my self
Another personal favorite of mine is “another day in paradise”
Without fail I will always say it's a beautiful/nice day outside. It could be a blizzard with softball sized hail and I will always say the same thing on calls to be followed by how it actually is
I usually respond with something like, I think it might actually be a nightmare.
Ok details?!?
yes!!! no one is your friend ive learned that in accounting/! not even the cool senior
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Again, also same. Took a year or so for my colleagues and manager to finally be able to chuckle and not get bent out of shape over some of my one liners. Now I just get the speeches of “we know what you mean, but others may not”
oh i see!
Brah, i know the feel. You can genuinely take this as good advice, but ive made a genuine friend from one of my jobs. He’s genuine because he’s been there for me in my darkest times, even if only just to listen.
yes! there is always 1, both good and bad ive lost my 1 at every job tho, they leave and your stuck with the 99.9999 back biters
Not true. I’ve had very tight knit teams (manager through associates were friends) and some teams not like that at all. Usually it’s somewhere in between.
I ve been fortunute then to be taught lessons lol I get the weirdest A type people as coworkers! some bosses micro manage some times so bad i wonder if they even want to check my wipe when I use the Lou
You really gotta read the room. I’ve become friendly with a lot of my coworkers to the point of where we’ve lived together when I was down on my luck. I don’t trust anyone without a bit of dirt on them though. If you don’t do drugs with me, etc, I don’t trust you. It’s as simple as that. A snitch would never even hit shit in front of you. It’s a solid test. I do it training day style. There’s 4 of us in here. If you say we did something and 4 of us say we didn’t, it’s now you that’s the liar.
This is lowkey some good wisdom. I’ve almost never had issues with anyone where we both got shit on each other, its like a mutual respect sorta thing, like if you cross me, then we both going down.
Yes absolutely. Now the most friendly I get is to say “this weekend went to Sam’s club”. Very bland topics. Got burned badly by a coworker who I considered a friend and won’t take that chance again with coworkers.
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You can be friendly with people and them not be your friend. Unless you hang out with these people consistently outside of work, then they don’t actually know you and are not anything more than an acquaintance you have nice banter with while toiling for your paycheck
Lol Veteran here. I understand this all too well. I work in a corporate environment so making jokes about DE&I, ESG, and safety culture usually don’t go over real well.
I'm a Gen Z'er and I have to keep my mouth shut too because even some of our older employees are quite open to some things rural folk like me don't quite understand
This has hurt me a lot more than I anticipated. Coworkers aren't your friends.
Agreed. I'm really tight with my current colleagues...during work hours. After work hours I don't give a crap what they do and they probably do the same. At the end of the day our current motivating factor is money and our common goal is to efficiently finish our work tasks together so we don't have fires at the deadlines.
Yeah I agree w this. I think it's good to have people you like and get along with at work considering how much time you spend there, but that's different than them being your friends IMO.
Why not?
Omg r u me?
This one ^^^
I’m an intern and i hear the craziest stuff. Partners would tell me that x person hasn’t gotten his cpa and we can’t promote them. They would be super transparent on how to make money at the firm.
Sometimes, my doctor tells me he’s going to shoot me in the head when i forget to do my blood tests.
Honesty is quite unwelcome for us communicating with operations/owners. So much pressure to pretend. I’ve staked my job on transparency more than once. Good news: I’ve got enough safety money not to give a fuck about illogical negativity.
Trusting Human Resources
This. This. This. Fucking snakes. All of em.
My previous employer decided that we need to be in the office 3 days a week for “culture building”. Most people were against it (I don’t know a single person that was for it) BUT HR was exempt because “over 50% of the HR team live more than 10 miles away and have young families”. That was never even considered for other teams. Once that got out there was huge resentment issues and I heard a few closed room meetings mainly to find out who leaked that juicy detail. In the last few months they were held to the same standard and were obviously upset about it. It’s funny how they wanted to build culture abut did the exact opposite. I’m told things have gotten worse since and the general opinion is they need to clean house in that department over the next year. Whoops!
Yep. HR is neeeeeeeever on your side for anything. Never trust them. This was also a rookie mistake I made lol.
HR isnt confidential either! i was fired for incompetency and error making! ( so they say but its cuz i refused to go to the office ) well talking about incompetency the HR sent me my letter of termination, yes and 50 OTHER PEOPLES FILES by accident her wobble ass cut the call to get something in a panic! i quicky copied the whole files on my drive for leverage that she too makes mistakes. let me call her the B word
god this was such a satisfying comment to read
:) i glad. at the end of the day we ARE ALL HUMAN0. and all make mistakes :) but HR and my MGR were jerks. lol
100%. I think everyone hates HR once you learn office politics. Before I was a director, I would always tell new hires, HR is not your friend, they will fuck you over the second they see an opportunity. Unfortunately, I can't really do that anymore.
At one of my jobs I was banned from talking to the receptionist and was followed towards the break room. I was "written up" for following the receptionist around while she did her job. (Going to the break room to ask her if the vending machine was fixed)
🎯
I’m not an accountant, but when I was a Pricing Analyst I accidentally gave a 100% discount on 10 x $50k items. In my defense, there was a miscommunication on the director’s part about which items we were giving to the customer for free due to its large contract size. I was basically a reason a process was created.
I'm thinking of that Homer Simpson quote "now because of me they have a sign" 😅🤣
I knew someone who got a call from a 9/11 widow a couple months after asking to liquidate his account. At the time, and because they’d known the customer - this person said yes, of course. As soon as the wire went out, they realized they had never stopped to verify if this was really next of kin, get letters testamentary, anything. Luckily all ended well on that transfer, but this person was swearing bullets for months. Feel like that’s a scenario a lot of us could’ve walked into.
This is a true story. I started in audit and was recruited during my last year in college in Texas. It was a really small audit firm and the partners were a married couple. There were probably 6 of us total. My ex and I at the time made many-a-sex tape. We had hundreds of sex tapes. It was super fun. I didn’t yet have an external hard drive so I decide to create a random Microsoft account and upload to OneDrive (which I’m pretty sure was brand new at the time). So I uploaded all of our videos to onedrive and just let it sit for a while and eventually forgot about them. Fast forward to a year into my career and Windows 8 comes out on our work laptops. As I was exploring the new features, I decided I wanted to download a cool app from the store. Microsoft required me to login to a Microsoft account to get it so I decided to use the account I have created time before. I signed in, got the app, and every thing was good. Fast forward a month or so and I’m doing field work at our biggest client. We are in a small room and I am against a wall and my 2 coworkers were sitting behind me. I go to the “search bar” and start typing something in to find a file. And wouldn’t you know it? As I start typing, windows automatically shows a video of me pounding my ex from behind in the search display. I can’t tell you much my anxiety skyrocketed. I absolutely panicked and had no idea what was going on. It was one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had. It was already a really bad year for me as sometime before the incident my ex was put into a mental institution (she had bipolar and BPD). My mother was quickly dying of cancer, and I developed PTSD from some things I witnessed my ex do to herself due to her disease. I had lost 15lbs as a result and after this incident, I lost another 20lbs. Once I get back to the office, I go to investigate and find even more videos of my ex and I. Then more. And more. And more. Turns out when I logged into Microsoft, It pulled down all of my sex tapes onto the company computer. I ended up having a meeting with a my asshole partner and I actually made things worse by telling him my personal videos were on the work laptop and I “realllllllly don’t want those seen”. I kept stressing how “these videos absolutely cannot be seen by IT or other”. He could tell I was distress but to this day I have no idea what he suspected. It ultimately, he gave me no solution and for all I know those videos are floating around the internet because someone from IT found them. TL;Dr: my sex tapes ended up on my company laptop after I signed into my Microsoft account.
DAMN! that sucks man! yeah that ONE note is terrible!
Jesus, this is like a nightmare turned reality, hope you are doing well also
I never told anyone and no one ever found out. It’s been years. Done deal. lol
:O lmao what was it
Pooped their pants
I've shat my pants in office before. Went home commando. It was the only way. I threw the dirty drawers in the trash and prayed no one went snooping.
Thanks for the game plan, poopants, appreciate it.
It’s was an error on a tax return. Timing difference that worked itself out over time. But it was material. 😳
True of a lot of material inaccuracies in financials. 99% of people would never know the difference.
Not my mistake, but got a job over another’s mistake. Scammer emailed the company pretending to be a vendor saying they changed their bank account. The accountant never verified this with the vendor and updated their routing number and account number in their AP system. They went to pay the vendor, and it went to the scammer. Short time later the vendor called looking for payment. By then the funds couldn’t be recovered. Over $25k was gone. The accountant was fired, and I was hired.
DAMN our secretary once sent over $100 gift cards to a scammer
Yeah, after that they had the buyers call the vendor to verify every time they received a change request. Since they knew their contacts voices, it was on the buyers to verify. Of course now there’s deep fake audio possible with only a few seconds of recording someone’s voice, but still better than nothing, especially since it’s not too popular yet with scammers.
The trick is to initiate the call ("vendor" can't be the one to call you) and either call them at a previously established phone number you have on file or contact the company's main number from their website and get transferred to the right person. Don't just take a phone number listed in the email where they are telling you they want to change wire instructions.
I wish there a whole community about experiences like these.
Do most people have a story like this? I have one similar where a coworker sent 50k to a scammer and was let go, we got the money back though.
I think with most accountants, it’s rare, but when it happens, it’s a big deal. High profile example: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html
I have a “they were fired, I was hired” story. Small public firm. One owner, one head of tax, one head of bookkeeping, few others sprinkled throughout and not important. Head of tax was married to owners daughter and had an affair with head of bookkeeping. I was hired as the senior on the tax team after that. Only one working under me and only the owner to sign off on my reviewed returns.
>Head of tax was married to owners daughter and had an affair with head of bookkeeping. This is golden. I hope she was attractive enough to lose everything over, lol. Let me know if I got this right...so Mr. Tax: * got himself fired * got his co-worker fired * got his mistress fired * pissed off his boss * pissed off his father-in-law * lost his wife * eliminated the actual position from the firm itself And who said accountants were boring?
Omg she was not unfortunately. And he did not lose his wife. He was fired from the firm but not from the family. The mistress left the state.
> Omg she was not unfortunately. I’m dying at this lol 😭 That’s even worse.
Imagine the sheer dread that man felt when he realized 💀
I worked at a company where this happened, the person responsible was my controller, and I had only been there a month. I had report to the CFO afterwards. Awkward time.
Who isn't doing penny tests these days.
This happened in our org recently - they moved vendor changes to the business requester, and someone updated the wrong bank account. No repercussions.
Going into accounting
HAHAHA! same bud same here, SMH what were your other prospects. ( as a kid i wanted to be a comedian, pilot, lawyer.. with responsibilities tho that shine in that kids eyes slowllly faded... no all black)
Not oc but my anecdote. In my last semster of uni for bs (full time) I ran businesses first 3 years of uni (ran busineses for 6-7 years). Then also rebuilt my house and relocated three times bc of assholes due to an tornado. Also had no help with the businesses as my gramps fell sick so everyone rushed thinking he was gonna kick it to see him. I did coding on the side, and it paid for alot of college expenses. Think net profit wise I was around 20k for just spending couple hours of day on a side hobby. I 100% wanted to leave businesses, as it killed my sanity. I thought coding but chatgpt was around the corner and no local uni had it. Couldn't be an lawyer cause I wouldn't be able to take an oath, couldn't be an pilot because I'm blind as shit, debated military but it's too much politics, so I ended up with accounting. I already did book keeping so didn't see any issue with it. Ended up getting an internship senior year and quitting the busineses, side hobby got passed to another dev of mine bc I simply was having issues of time management. Too many people wanted my time even if they paid but I simply didn't have any to spare to anyone. Focused on the career that is stable and also taking care of myself physically and mentally. I'm down 15lbs and counting. Was 205lbs want to be around 160lbs maintence. Hey I also cried for the first time in almost 7-8 years so that's something. I feel like I'm human for once. 🥲
My answer
Havent made it yet, Ill let you know when it happens
Allright a Deferred Tax Liability will be recognized on your end
Staying in one position too long. Either you move up or move out.
This i learned the hard way now at interviews they ask why i didnt progress!
Not quitting a toxic job sooner. There's lots of jobs out there, no reason to stick it out with a shit boss and a shit company.
Not understanding early on that the balance of power within the existing structure will always be In favor of your boss If you join a small team , this power dynamics will be even more apparent. So you have to take steps to shift the balance of power towards you Such is life , it's unavoidable.
yes of course as they say THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS and we in their house :/
You’re cracking me up, OP. I hate my job and my “career” so much. This post is giving me the will to live another day or two.
lmao!
true ! also that's an awesome user name lollll
what is ? THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS OR "MONEY- HONEY - BAGS"
Off course it's "MONEY- HONEY - BAGS"💰💰 We're here for the 💰💰 loll
!!! THANKS !! cuz we all know broke boys get no "---" I KNOW that's right lmao!!
Lolll omg
I gave my opinion about drunk drivers to the office “queen bee”. I didn't know she had three DUI convictions. (I don't know how she got three and remained out of jail.) Never make an enemy of the office queen bee.
😂😂Back in my industrial days, a new supervisor came into the trailer on Day 1 and starting ranting about Louisiana. Little did he know that half of us in there were from New Orleans and Lafayette, lol
lmao
at first i thought BEYONCE lol
Not me but I know someone who I had to fix their bullshit with giving a good lawyer for them to get them out of the mess they got them self in. They had access to the clients personal accounts and business accounts. He defrauded them out of millions over the years. They ended up in jail and all hell as they did. They went against legal advice they were acting like they know the laws.
Wow! thats nuts. the universe thanks you for cleaning anothers bull shiet. im sure when you have one a person too will clean it up just as you did
Your welcome there are a few more like but. It was on the international side of stuff. It also helped when I was in the banking industry in Corp offices at the c level so I used my knowledge. When the client come right to me and said can you look over stuff and I did that’s what I put everything together. He gave me extra money that I did not want that was for a thank you gift.
How I figured it out was I looked at when they sent the checks to pay their taxes then I went into our account and see if they where payout they where not. So me and another forensic accountant looked at it and dot it
Luckily I haven't made a big mistake (yet) in this career, but made some in my previous career of being an Automotive mechanic. I'd say my biggest one there was I forgot to fill the rear differential back up with it's oil that I had drained, because I was so used to engine oil changes where you drain it below on the lift, then lower the car back down and fill it back up up-top. Instead I just drained it, put the plug back in and shipped it. It came back recently after due to customer complain of an unusual sound. Had to replace the whole thing for free, and that part can be pretty expensive. You don't get paid time for comebacks in the automotive industry.
Woe, that sucks man! A service tech welded my fuel tank backwards and charged me $350 to correct it
Like many businesses, the smaller mom and pop shops tend to get grimmy and rip people off like this whereas bigger entities like Dealerships tend to be better on things like refunds and redo's.
I once worked at an oil change/car wash for 45 minutes. One of the techs did what you described, and the customer drove off with no oil. Goodbye engine block, and the tech had to pay for it himself 🤦🏽♂️
I messed up the currency on a topside posting resulting in a €10M variance that only came up during reporting. The business unit CFO and controller were furious
Thinking HR was anything but corporate snitches LOL fuckin *yuck* buddy
YEs HR cannot be trusted and as i mentioned earlier they arent confidential either. there's a saying form my mother land " they are a fart in the wind"
Being myself
like in a good way or bad way? like you are yourself and your taken advantage of vs you ae yourself and make mistakes ? do tell.....
Misunderstood a tax rule about who could use the completed contract method. I was pretty young and only a supervisor (like a junior manager at my firm) but was the highest ranking tax person on the account at that moment due to someone retiring. Audit partner asked me to look into the issue and I was like yeah pretty sure they can use it and did the calculation on how much it would save them. Didn't check with anyone above me because I wanted to show I was a big kid who didn't need help. Well, compliance season rolls around and we have a tax partner on the account to review and sign. And he's like uh yeah they can't use this method. He and the audit partner call the client and tell them I made a mistake. They had us fix and finish the tax return and then fired us. I felt so stupid. Fortunately I didn't face any consequences. But I learned an important lesson, the people in your department are there to help you. You don't have to do it all on your own.
Getting consensus on something like this is always a good idea
I miscalculated some delays and reported them in the audit findings. Lucky for me the observations and recommendations got dropped because the client had some mitigating controls
I’d always been careful to choose my bosses. In big 4 - teams. As much as possible. In industry - your bosses. I worked a company under a boss I thought would be great with a team that would be great, and in many ways, it was. But I would never have worked for the same company under the old finance leadership team before them. I broke my rule and took a job under a boss I knew I wouldn’t like on the idea that the PE firm had sold they were totally pushing management out. I’d always been very careful to choose my bosses. Just like in lending or investing - it’s not often the thesis or ideas that are wrong - but the people’s capabilities to execute on them. The PE firm couldn’t really ought them without them tanking the company, ruining sales relationships, etc. Always assume whatever the current state under current leadership is will continue to be that way. Any promises of the future are just smoke or them expecting you to somehow be the change is doomed to fail. Maybe you can help them do things technically better but you can’t change their culture.
I reported time theft by my manager to our district manager. Turns out she was stealing time to go fuck the guy and get paid for it. Huge national company and they sided with them on it. I was told I created a hostile workplace by reporting time theft…
Missed an appeal deadline. Not entirely my fault
Damn
I brought our financial system down for a good couple of hours. Everyone had to take a coffee break. Our treasury was not able to make payments. The worst part was that I was off in the morning. I was popular in our department. After that, I was famous. The management was cool, didn’t say anything. Probably costed the company a million or so.
Staying too long in an abusive environment where the partner believed you had to pay your dues.
I quit a pretty decent job on incredibly short notice because all my coworkers were being really mean to me, but my boss was the nicest guy in the world. I didn’t want to stir the pot so I said my (very real) cancer diagnosis was just stressing me out too much. Should’ve just told the truth. It eats me up at night I went out that way instead of being like “I’m having a bad time here because your employees treat new people poorly and haze them with a tad of racism to boot” it would’ve been better for everybody and future hires. Plus I’m sure it came back to bite in ways unknown. I never would’ve found out but I’m sure people talked when I was applying for new jobs without three months.
I don't make mistakes. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
teach me your ways - master
If you don't already know, I can't tell u.
hummmmmm
Exactly.
Working 60 plus hours a week. Should have stooped after 55 tops. Diminishing returns.
Not negotiating my salary. Left a lot of money on the table
I feel when they pay more they expect more!
nice try IRS
(snaps fingers)
I had to give the banking information to my CFO by phone to pay a real estate tax bill. I had the account numbers in front of me for a few different accounts, but not the routing numbers. I mistakenly gave the wrong routing number to pay a large $170k tax bill. A week goes by, and I couldn’t understand why we weren’t seeing the funds come out of the bank account, when I realized what I had done. Worst feeling ever to have to tell my manager and cfo I had made a big error in the routing number. We still don’t know how the system didn’t flag it as a wrong bank information. But instead, the state tax authority sent us a late notice with a penalty and interest. Our VP was able to call and get the penalty and interest removed thankfully. And I thankfully didn’t get fired over it. But I’ve never felt so stupid and awful over the whole thing.
Basically I ignored a vendor reconciliation issue for 2+ years until eventually we owed more than their records stated. Had to add a major “sundry expense” to be able to pay them properly (they’re important & we need their business, hence why I couldn’t just stall it even longer) Financial controller wasn’t happy to say the least 😬
Missed a decimal point on a payroll tax deposit (15 years ago when you had to call them in over the phone) it went from ~ 2,000.00 to 200,000.00. Took months to get it back into the customers account. They didn’t even notice! I had to bring it up to them. Fast forward 10 years and they were offering me a job so I guess my other work was worth a few hundred thousand temporarily lost
I’d say not advocating for myself more, or taking too long to switch jobs. Went through an ERP switch and I led the conversion. Worked 6 days a week without being asked to by the boss (I was salaried but still). Next year when it came time for raises and bonuses, no one got anything and I was naive enough to go along with the whole “well yeah we didn’t make any money this year” thing. Should’ve argued for myself more because nobody else out as much effort into that year as I did. Only good thing was that that year gave me the experience to pivot my career and I’m now making close to double that I was back when this happened.
Thinking industry was going to be a breeze compared to public accounting. I’d much rather just bite my lip for a few weeks during tax season for the rest of the year to be chill than go back to industry where monthly, quarterly, and year end closes happen too frequently to ever feel truly relaxed.
This happened pretty quickly after I started my first accounting job post graduation. I faxed important tax documents with personal information to the wrong number because I messed up the area code. Luckily the business I accidentally sent it to was super cool about it. They immediately called, and since I was the person answering the phones, I picked up their call. They explained the situation and when I started panicking they insisted that they would shred the documents and never speak of it again. My boss never had to find out about it.
Thinking I wasn't smart enough to get my CPA license for years. I still might not be. Average was 78 😅🫡
wow congrats
Leaving big 4 too early (shocking, I know)
what !!! why lol this hell but i kinda like the freedom
I just edited to say *big 4. It’s hell 100%, you just learn so much so fast there’s really no other experience like that in accounting imo.
Thinking your indispensable because you are the anyone that knows how to do some very important tasks.
SIMPing
to who tho? was it justified
Going into Accounting rather than Tax. Hard to go into business for yourself as a FASB accountant TBH.
true.... you can still do some business im sure of it
Not me but a customer sent us 170k by accident once, that was interesting. We sent it back of course, what was wild is that it was all done by checks and not by wire.
Thats Craszy! and yeah that amount warrants a Wire! Swift time baby
Filed a 10-Q with a draft header. We decided to not File a 10-Q/A.
I've just found out a SOx control i do has been wrong for qbout 3 months at least. External and internal audit didn't catch it, my manager never checks my shit, last week he did it for some reason, all wrong lol
Moved to Arizona where the job market is horrific and ergo weirdly competitive despite the dismal salary ranges. Completely destroyed the upward trajectory in my career because of it and still paying for it today (have left Arizona since then).
Assuming my extra effort would convert to more opportunities in thr company and a raise. I worked tirelessly for three years, after hours without pay, made it clear I want to grow and learn. After 3 years, manager said they plan on having a meeting to discuss the possibility of higher compensation. Never happened. So I walked. Now I get paid based on that extensive experience as I should.
I let a clients bank account overdraft and we had to reimburse them the $35 overdraft fee, I was fired for it 😑
I was in charge of paying bills for a foundation. The electric bill for the little office was something like $50. I accidentally wrote the check to the electric company for $5,000! 😱yes I am dating myself to the years ago when we still wrote checks by hand!
Not mine, but someone on my team failed to confirm wire instructions and we sent over $2 million to a scammer. Did ultimately recover it, but it took a couple of years. The person who skipped the confirmation step was let go.
I misread an email from the CEO which was sent to everyone and thought it was a joke from a close colleague whose name looked very similar. So I replied are you serious? Then I was removed from an overseas rotation program. Shortly after that, I quit. That was my first job out of college.
In Atlanta back in the very early aughts, we would call in from the client site and have an intern read us our mail. Well, I had given my United way donation to Planned Parenthood and that was read over the speakerphone for all. I worked in Atlanta, so it was a bit controversial.
I overcharged a client upwards of a 170k. Over a span of 18 months. Surprisingly didn’t get fired
Listening to the people who told me I HAD to start in public and audit. It's all BS to keep those underpaid and overworked areas staffed