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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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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.

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