We all know them. The categorizations of humans in two very particular professions. They’re our family members, friends, co-workers, and many times, ourselves. We respect them, love them, hate them, and either want to be them or we roll our eyes at them as our full time jobs. We’ve categorized these precocious little devils into those types of accountants and attorneys you’re likely to run into more of often than not.
Under our attorney and compliance hat wearers, we have three kinds. First, the silent neurotics. These are the people who would likely run your office single handedly if left alone for an hour with four monitors, a solid contract drafts portfolio, and a gift card to Staples. If left with proper time to introvert and time to bond over a mutual loathing of the clients who post on social media without consulting with you, you could easily become their ally. These people color code their color coding and talk to their therapist about said color coding, but their behaviors save all mass litigation that comes in the door.
The aggressor. This is the person who thinks they are God’s gift to a world in desperate need of an advocacy savior. Although in a compliance position, the United States court system as we know it would crumble without their shoulders holding it up. Some are the most ego driven humans you will ever meet. Others, if genuine, could create as much change as Johnnie Cochran circa the age of The Dream Team.
Finally, we have the attorney who has absolutely no idea why they went to law school. The stigma is that everyone hates a lawyer, and, well, this lawyer hates them just as much, if not more. They know legal jargon in their sleep and could draft the perfectly long non-compete in an hour with no mistakes but spend 74% of that their time regretting entering the so called self regulating profession they are now associated with. Ultimately they contemplate feeding that monkey on their backs of becoming a backpacking, penniless nomad.
Under our accountant realm, we have the accountant who, believe it or not, doesn’t actually do taxes. This person spends a third of their year working peacefully without issues, one third explaining to people they don’t do taxes in the private sector, and the other third beating the masses of society off of them during the April season while trying to shop for groceries. These people are the rational humans about finances. They don’t eat, drink, live, and breathe numbers, but they do enjoy them on frequent occasion. They work very hard to normalize the difference between a CMA and a CPA, while also simultaneously convincing their friends and family that they actually know how to do math without the licensure.
The busy season accountant. The full throttle version of what we all think an accountant is. Whatever you’re imagining, that’s it. Somewhere in a corner surviving off bread crumbs, contemplating their existence in this profession while fruitlessly resisting the urge to do everyone’s taxes in sight. They scoff at those who rely on H&R Block or TurboTax without the aid of someone to help a layperson understand it, and spend significant time working at a big four before transitioning into what they believe will ultimately be the career they die in before burning out the last of their accounting calculators.
Finally, we have the new accountant. They’re wet behind the ears and boy, do they show it. Early to work and early to rise, makes an accountant healthy, wealthy, and over eager. These people spend they time analyzing postage as if their lives depended on it, and frantically believe every discrepancy is fraud. They went into this profession to follow their dream of the almighty reliability of math, but spend their days looking for pennies and obtaining old school adding machines to buy and subsequently post on Instagram as decoration in their budget friendly apartments.
