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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2343 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So here's an admittedly fairly trivial matter that's been on my mind lately. This is a bit of Fun, bit of Wellness, take it mainly as a lighthearted question because it's really not weighing on me too badly all things considered.

It's Friday and I'm home after 10 hours poring over numbers in Excel spreadsheets. I find that after a workday like this it's hard to get myself to do anything at all, it's almost as if there is a daily quota of mental effort I can expend on things. Once I devote all of that to preparing people's financial statements, income tax returns, business activity statements and so on I can't devote any more of my focus to my own projects and endeavours. Not to mention memory limitations, I am now using a significant portion of my storage capacity to track goings-on at work (made worse by my clients' numerous demands, which I will mention later) and remember the appropriate accounting and tax treatment for various matters as well as the relevant circumstances of each of my clients. The work itself isn't necessarily super difficult in and of itself, it's just that there are a lot of clients asking for a lot of different things.

It's quite hard to coordinate anything after work too, because my clients are often absolute fucking children who expect they be catered to on a timeframe that suits them - for example, they want things to be done at a certain time yet sometimes take forever to provide the information necessary to do the work they request, and their delays sometimes require me to stay long after close of business. Yesterday, I had scheduled something with a family member at 6pm, and near close of business the client returned with over a dozen transactions they wanted me to process (while this is something that happens on Thursdays the client usually provides the relevant info earlier in the day), and I was forced to complete the work hastily and hand it over to a reviewer - who unsurprisingly found errors. Said reviewer was not happy about that, and I have stopped planning anything after work because of this. Compared to other stuff that's happened though, this is a small matter - this same client requested that we do work over the Christmas period for them, when the office is closed and people are expected to take annual leave. Please note, they sprung this on us in November, when almost everyone else working on the client had already made travel plans, and as a result I might be the one who has to do that work.

I can't really list anything significant I do outside of work at the moment, because as it is right now the work week smashes me enough that I can't build up the level of focus necessary to actually do things. In other words, I feel as if I'm becoming my work, and I'm not sure if I like that.

How do you not be a boring person after work? Help, please.

In college, I joined the schools smallbore target shooting team. It was amazing at working your mind but in an entirely different way from active thinking required for classes. Perhaps that's part of why golf is so popular?

You don't have to answer these, but

  1. Why do you let clients demand things like that? Can't you clearly define deadlines and turn around times upfront? Make them pay rush fees if they really need to?
  2. Why when others have plans, are you expected to do the work? Is this reciprocal? Can't you make "fake" plans and stand firm?
  3. Why do you work after work hours? Do other people do this? Is it part of the industry or is it just you?

Why do you let clients demand things like that? Can't you clearly define deadlines and turn around times upfront? Make them pay rush fees if they really need to?

I'm a graduate who works with other people on clients, work gets delegated downwards to me. I'm not involved in client management to the degree where I would be able to tell them to fuck off. I do communicate with clients insofar as it's relevant to me finishing the job, but setting boundaries with clients would be a clear breach of my ambit.

Why when others have plans, are you expected to do the work? Is this reciprocal? Can't you make "fake" plans and stand firm?

I didn't make "fake" plans since I want to see just how much progression I can milk out of the job. If burning my candle at both ends does absolutely nothing for me, I'll scale back my participation.

As to whether it's reciprocal, I don't know. I may not end up being the one doing the work, since one of my superiors has said that they might be able to do the work if their schedule allows for it. So that's a possible indication that they would try to accommodate a schedule I had.

Why do you work after work hours? Do other people do this? Is it part of the industry or is it just you?

Yes, other people do this. To varying extents. I have been told that I work quite hard and that I don't have to stay so late completing client work. But the reason why I do this is because if I don't get tasks off my plate early, I'm going to be absolutely overwhelmed later when things start coming due and clients start making stupid requests that derail my plans.

For example, one of the earliest clients I started work on back in September did not respond to a query that we sent them, and made us wait for a month. When their representative/intermediary responded in the middle-to-end of October, her stated reason was that she was on leave and that none of her staff were able to deal with our query. Then reminded us she wanted the work done by 31 October. Making this worse is that this was a period where I had another client's deadlines coming due. I had to work almost exclusively on these two clients and drop the rest of my existing client work to deal with it, and have just been getting back to working on my other clients now.

Once I sent the financial statements and income tax returns off to her (very late in the month), she found a discrepancy between the client's internal financials and ours, then passed it back to me to investigate this discrepancy. It turns out our numbers were correct and this discrepancy was the client's own damn fault because they posted an adjusting journal twice in the prior year, which affected current year balances. Then after she was told this, she then came back with yet another issue - this time it was a trivial nitpick about the presentation of prior year figures, which meant I had to adjust it and send off again.

This kind of thing makes it impossible to properly plan my time, so I just get all the work out of the way early so I won't be too swamped once a client does something utterly irritating like that.

This sounds like public accounting, and if it is, the only way forward is out.

All my partners and senior managers were divorced. I don’t want to get divorced. I won’t get divorced unless my wife does something I think she's incapable of doing. So I made plans to leave, then I left.

Since then my marriage has been enriched, and my friendships outside of work have flourished. Where I was regularly turning friends down for a casual evening activity before (“it’s at 6? I can’t even know if I’ll be available by 8”), I am now sharing dinner with a different set of friends every week, sometimes more than once a week.

How do you not be a boring person after work? Help, please.

  1. Get a different job that is less demanding.
  2. Learn how to flip your switch faster. If you go from work mode to fun mode in just a minute you can have more time for both. Some way to psych yourself up, a song, a shot of your favorite liqour, a good fap, etc.
  3. Wreck your sleep schedule. Just stay up really late on some nights to have fun and make up the sleep on other nights.
  4. Be worse at work. There is often a range of performance that all gets treated essentially the same. Different companies have smaller or larger ranges. But its where an employee getting 3 things done a day is treated the same as an employee getting 5 things done a day. If they drop to two things done a day its a problem. If they go up to 6 things a day its maybe worthy of praise. The worst place to be is at the top of the "standard work" range. You are working too hard for too little recognition. If you can't get to 6 things a day, it doesn't help you to get close and do 5. If you aren't getting special recognition just do better than the worst employee, and be a joy to have around and you'll be fine.

Yesterday, I had scheduled something with a family member at 6pm, and near close of business the client returned with over a dozen transactions they wanted me to process (while this is something that happens on Thursdays the client usually provides the relevant info earlier in the day), and I was forced to complete the work hastily and hand it over to a reviewer - who unsurprisingly found errors.

This is certainly where I would start, with the drawing of appropriate boundaries. While granting that it's not always an option for the obvious reasons, my own reaction to such a development would be, "wow, that sucks, I'll take a pass in the morning". If the response was that it needs to happen today, my reply is simply that I already have plans and that the client needs to provide a standard 24-hour turnaround time, that I am not infinitely flexible in turning my personal life and time management over to accommodate their slipshod decision-making and time management. By setting appropriate boundaries, I can plan my own life better and be dedicated to doing the things I actually care about, which are decidedly not the things I've done to pay the bills.

In conjunction with that, scheduling consistent activities that appear as calendar blocks that are inviolable is helpful and ensures that you'll do the things you care about. For me, that's a running club. Have something you need me to stay for on Tuesday? Nope, can't, I have trackwork with the boys at 5, so I'll see you tomorrow. This both defines the work boundary and locks me into doing a nonwork activity that I care about.

Also worth a mention is that failing to do this will result in the problem getting worse. If you're the guy that's willing to pick up the slack when some asshole asks for something at 8PM, well, you're the guy that's going to get told to do it.

I can't tell you how to be less boring outside of work.

However, you clearly don't have an infinite amount of work. So any time savings there would be something you should seek out, and the better you get at this, the initial problem becomes less of a problem.

Is there any standardized format in the data you deal with? If so you can automate all the grunt work with a python script. If it's not standardized, it's going to be a bit more rough..

BUT GPT-4 exists. I'm sure "code-interpreter"/"advanced data analysis" can do what needs to be done at a fraction of the time you would need in excel. And anonymizing data is trivial with a python script as well.

I really don't think someone sufficiently smart enough to use ChatGPT and write a bit of code should be doing excel-monkey work in this day and age when we have tools that can do that automatically with natural language prompts.

Automating away a bunch of my work has actually been in my mind. There's often no standardised format to the data though (sometimes a client will just throw us various bank statements, rental statements and other such documents and we'll just have to use those). This isn't an insurmountable problem and I do want to do it, but I haven't had sufficient downtime to pursue that goal yet.

Human in the loop my man -- just take your best shot at automating the thing and then present it to yourself (or better yet a lackey) item by item as approve/don't approve.

You do work like a robot this way, but stuff gets done a lot faster even if your automation is highly imperfect.

Did you try using code interpreter for a batch or two? It can demolish through spreadsheet grubt work.

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