Morning at Work

The day has gotten off to a rough start. I have a manager that I work with who's primary responsibility is to maintain solid lines to our parent company in New York. He's an accounting manager and our parent company has Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, which pretty much means that every accountant working for our Dear Leader's entire job is centered around being as pedantic, ridiculous and anal as possible. We are just a dinky subsidiary that keeps missing our numbers, and it is hard to earn the confidence of our overlords when performance of the company as a whole is unspectacular.

I'm not an accountant, and I can think of no job on earth that would make me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon more. I appreciate those that do this job like I appreciate the roto-rooter man--they pump the crap so that I don't have to. However, I work closely with these guys because relationships with our parent company is my business.

Well, this morning I received a complaint on my voicemail that prompted a very uncomfortable conversation I had to have with said manager. It went like this:

Me: If parent company troll #2 doesn't understand your spreadsheet, you can't call her a shithead...

Roto-Rooter Accountant: But she's an idiot.

Me: Great, how does that make her a shithead? Not only have you managed to destroy your relationship with those who have us by the tail, your invective mislabeled her incompentcy.

Roto-Rooter Accountant: What doesn't that mean?

Me: If you called her Shit-for-brains at least you would have made a correct association.

Roto-Rooter Accountant: It slipped.

Me: She said you called her a shithead 14 times.

Roto-Rooter Accountant: She called me a meathead.

Me: Well, at least she managed to get the association correct.

Actually, I don't blame him as much as I blame the previous CFO that thought it would be good to hire a former college football player in a role most responsible for maintaining delicate relationships with little old ladies and career assosiate level accountants in a billion dollar organization. If you are looking for nuance, it probably is a bad idea to fill it with someone who slams the phone on the desk repeatedly when thing don't go his way. When all his co-workers refer to him as "Roid Rage," you might think about offering some anger management classes to him, or maybe you can find a job more suitable to his personality, like Sales.

You know, just saying...