BerthaBlog

Today I paid taxes. I never thought I’d be so happy to be paying taxes.

I’ve been settling in fairly well to the new job. My trainer is patient and very knowledgeable. She’s been doing this for over fifteen years and is training to be an auditor. She knows her shit.

In the tradition of not using real names, I’ll refer to her as Cricket—because she’s small and quick, and said “For the next three weeks, I’ll be your conscience.”

Cricket started doing the books for the church a couple of years ago, after they had been mistreated and abandoned. She nursed them back to health, set things up to work, and now is ready to move on. Cricket enjoys the challenge of fixing problems and retooling dysfunctional processes, but not the day-to-day tedium of bookkeeping.

Me, I’m just a baby accountant now. I’m thrilled to do the day-to-day tedium of bookkeeping.

As she walks me through things, Cricket is updating a manual for me to refer to after she leaves. This will be particularly helpful for the infrequently-done things like month-end reports. At this point I’ve pretty much got a handle on the daily chores like entering bills, writing checks, and processing purchase/reimbursement requests. I’m a bit rusty in some areas—it has been a year and a half since my last class—and I’m admittedly weak in my knowledge of the Chart of Accounts, but Cricket is generally pleased with how quickly I’m remembering what I know and picking up what I don’t. The more familiar I get with the systems in place, the more often I say, “Oh, that’s why you did it like that.”

When I’m a grown-up accountant I want to be like Cricket.