Accounting emergency

In Alex’s most recent post, he mentioned that although he doesn’t want to be a doctor, he would, just once, like to experience the thrill of standing up and walking down the aisle when the flight attendant calls out “is there a doctor on board?” But since they never call out “is there a salesman on board?*” he’s heretofore gone without this great honor.

*If they did call out “is there a salesman on board?” half the plane would stand up, so I’m not sure it would be quite so exciting being one of 187 salespeople versus being the one doctor among 374 non-physician passengers.

And while being the passenger of honor on airplanes would be cool, there’s a lot about being a doctor that would suck. Like being on call. Seriously, how annoying to be out on a date with your wife only to get a phone call in the middle to listen to a patient complain about an ingrown toenail?

Actually, I can tell you just how much that would suck. But not because I’m a doctor. A couple years ago, back when I still worked for the huge company, I was on a date with my wife when my cell phone rang. It was my finance manager. I’d spent the entire days in conference calls trying to wrap up the quarter end close, and I thought we had it all taken care of. Evidently we did not. And they just needed me to answer a question at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday.

Our date was interrupted for an accounting emergency. Guess what—there’s no such thing as an accounting emergency. There are medical emergencies. There are environmental emergencies. I’ll even grant that there are property emergencies. In rare cases, there may even be sales emergencies. But if it has anything to do with accounting, it’s not an emergency.

The quarter end close is telling you what already happened. It’s not going to change anything from happening. There’s no way to mitigate a bad thing that’s happened through accounting, at least not legally. So how can it be an emergency?

Not only that, but why call me about it? I’m not even the accountant! My finance manager calling me for an accounting emergency is like an obstetrician running from the delivery room to the lobby and saying “is there a product manager present? Because this baby’s breach, and I could really use your expertise with the delivery.”