The Refrigerator

We have two staff rooms in our offices in Reno. One on the accounting and assurance side of our house, and the other on the ‘Dark Side’. The refrigerators in each are bulletin boards for pictures, insults, jokes and matters of other significance. Typically you hope not to find comments, pictures or references to yourself or something you’ve done.This week, a Senior Assurance Manager posted an article that appeared in the December issue of the Journal of Accountancy Tax Corner titled How to Ease the Burden of Busy Season .The focus of the article is on what some firms have done to make the busy tax season more ‘palatable’, e.g. paying for dinner on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. (Apparently Wednesdays are required family nights.) While lunch isn’t paid for, they do have a delivery service so you can eat at your desk. And my personal favorite ‘vending machine snacks reduced to twenty-five cents’ ! Are you kidding me?!! These are not the characteristics of a career. They are the characteristics of a job. Who among us is looking for a job? Until we make professional accounting an attractive career instead of the job it is in most firms today, we will continue to experience the exodus of professional knowledge workers to industry. Retention will continue to be only a concept and not a reality.The comments on this article posted on the refrigerator by my associates would keep Jay Leno in material throughout the writer’s strike. I’m glad I didn’t see my name up there!