ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

An interesting thing about terrible companies is that working at them often makes the unhappy employees so paranoid that they don’t reach out to one another for succor. If you’re already in a precarious situation where you feel your position is unsteady and could falter with a single misstep, plus you’re relying on the income from the job and can’t afford to be let go, you don’t really have the luxury of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. So even if you suspect the person in the next cube over might be just as miserable as you are, it can be risky to say something based on mere assumption. When you take into account the fact that the other unhappy people might not even be in your department, the chance that you will actually manage to form a meaningful connection with one of them dwindles all the more significantly.

All of this contributed to the fact that my new staff accountant friend and I did not recognize each other as allies until almost the bitter end of our times at the company. We talked on the phone on my last day and I couldn’t get over how closely our experiences paralleled. We didn’t even work in the same freaking department. “Yeah, the 24 hour turnaround from interview to offer should have been my first clue-in,” she said. I agreed. We both basically followed the same pattern and timeline. First, elation at what a nice company it appeared to be. Then, slight discomfort as we realized that not everything appeared to be good here. Ultimately, bitter disillusionment. But it’s not like you can really go around talking about this type of thing to random people. Saying something critical in front of the wrong person could really hurt you, even if everything you said was stated diplomatically and was completely true.

Anyway, so in light of this I was thrilled to learn during the same phone call that she had given notice the day before my last day. Not only did I have a new kindred spirit to vent with, I wouldn’t even have to feel bad that she was still trapped there. Since soon she would not be. Yesterday was her last day. I realized this as I packed up my purse and belongings before heading out to the bus, and dashed off a quick message telling her congratulations.

Then last night she sent me a text message exclaiming, “I survived it!” Survived was about right. We talked on the phone this morning and although she left with more of the proverbial whimper (as opposed to my bang), it wasn’t all easy street either. Apparently her supervisor called her in and reamed her a new one last week, accusing her of basically every negative adjective you could think of. I thought this was freaking weird. Seriously, most people who were in a situation where someone they didn’t like was leaving the company would just shrug and take the attitude that the person would not be their problem anymore in another two weeks. Most people simply would not consider it constructive or worthwhile to go to the effort of lambasting an employee who was on their way out. There is no real professional justification for this, anyway. Even if the person accepted the criticism and decided to change the behavior, what good will it really have done the company when they leave a week later? It seems more like this type of encounter is an outlet for a personal grudge on the part of the one delivering the attack.

This seems par for the course at my old company. My new staff accountant friend struggled under a disproportionate and irreconcilable workload for months without getting any of the help she asked for multiple times, and ultimately received only criticism for the difficulty she had in coping with this bum deal. Now they will have to hire someone completely fresh and new who won’t know any of the field contacts or ins and outs of the job. It is hard to imagine how that person could possibly live up to expectations, when the employee who worked in the position for over a year was still struggling to keep up.

In other words, there is a reason the retail accounting group there is a freaking revolving door that constantly spits out staff level employees. You can only blame the employees themselves for so long.