Redemption

Sometimes redemption comes immediately, sometimes you have to wait thirty years for it.

I was getting ready to go to the bank to cash a hundred dollar check but before leaving I checked my mail. In the mail was a very nice card from my two bosses at the firm I just completed tax season for. The note had a hundred dollar bill in it and they wrote the following:

"Another successful tax season, Bill. Thank you for your wiliness to come back and help us. I used your workpapers as an example to F. for "how to do them." We would love to have you come back next year - keep in touch"

I absolutely loved the thoughtfulness of the message. I treasured the money because it was totally unexpected. But what I appreciated the most was the line "I used your workpapers as an example to F. as how to do them." Why?

I originally went to a four year college but after the accident I had to choose a college with good handicap facilities and the only one that fit the bill was a technical school. I received my A.A. Degree from the technical school in accounting technology. Then I received a scholarship to go back to the four year college. I took all my accounting classes at the technical school, all I took at the four year college was the electives required to get a B.S. Degree. The problem with doing the technical school first is that technical schools teach you practical things, they teach how to complete the task but not why you are doing it. I could do one hundred and twenty five strokes a minute on the adding machine, I just couldn't tell you why I was doing it. It really made for a very difficult transition from college to the working world.

After graduating from college I moved to Los Angeles. I wanted to become a CPA. To become a CPA you have to pass a two and one half day exam and work two years for a CPA firm. I didn't have a job when I first moved to LA. One day I decided to just hang out in downtown Long Beach. I put my suit on and headed out. When I got to downtown Long Beach, I spotted The Edison Building. I thought to myself there had to be a CPA firm in there. I walked in the lobby and sure enough there it was on the address board, "Arthur Young & Company." It was one of the largest eight accounting firms in the world at the time. I went upstairs and asked if they were hiring. They were. They had never heard of either of the small colleges in Southern Oregon that I attended so they asked if I would take a test. The test would take four hours. I was really coming down with a virus and was really sick to my stomach but I took the test anyway. I read the first thirty questions and only knew about ten of the answers. I was in a hurry to get out of there and get home to get some 7-up and rest. I kind of noticed in my ten answers a pattern. I didn't read any more questions, I just started marking the answers, following the pattern that I thought I had discovered. I would say to myself, no D's for a while so I better mark a D. Where are the C's. Got one now. I finished the test in a little over an hour. On they way home the partner at Arthur Young called me and asked if I would like to start work the next Monday. I had tripled the previous highest score on the test. Yup, little ole me had tripled the score of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, USC, UCLA grads. Had I read the darn questions no doubt I would have failed it.

Getting that high of a score on the test was the worst thing I could have done. It created expectations so high that I was never going to reach them. Combine that with my lack of knowledge of accounting theory and my first accounting job after college was doomed to failure. Instead of sending me out on my first audit assignment with their best senior accountant, they sent me out on my first audit assignment with their weakest senior accountant. Since the test score indicated star status they thought I could help him. The first audit assignment was to audit a hospital. Yup, after eight years in and out of hospitals the luck of the draw of audit assignments sent me to Woodruff Gables in Lakewood. They set up a trailer for T, the senior accountant, and I out behind the hospital. We would go into the hospital to get paper work and then go back out to the trailer to do our work. T was going through a divorce, he had one more chance to take the CPA exam and pass it or he was going to lose the two parts he had already passed. T was stress multiplied. My senior accountant on my first audit job out of college had a nervous breakdown and he had it on the job. I came to work one morning and there was T sitting pow wow style in the middle of the parking lot. He had this amazingly long extension cord, had the adding machine between his legs and set there adding up documents as cars whizzed by him and around him. I called the home office and reported the incident. I didn't think you could make it in five minutes from downtown Long Beach to Lakewood but the partner did. So there I was alone with no supervision doing workpapers that nobody taught me how to do.

Ten months into the job I got a call from home office to come in from the field. They fired me. The only job that I have ever been let go from. They said I didn't really understand the theory of accounting. They also said my workpapers were terrible and they doubted that I would learn how to do them.

Redemption is so sweet. Do you have any redemption stories you would like to share?