The Job

Well. It's been awhile! I just got back from my first day of big-girl work, so I thought this would be an appropriate time to update.

First things first: I passed all sections of my CPA exam. There's really nothing else to say about this except that the day I found out I passed the last one was probably one of the top 5 happiest days of my life. Also, I cannot WAIT for my CPA bonus. Holy crap. It will be awesome.

Donny and I have moved in together and it's wonderful!! Nothing TOO horrible yet... just minor spats here and there :) It's difficult to be around ANYONE 24/7, let alone someone of the opposite sex... yikes. But we're making it work and it's been awesome so far!

Onto my job.

We had to show up at the Columbus office this morning at 9 AM. Of course I'm an idiot and forgot we had to wear pantyhose if we want to wear skirts. Because clearly it's still 1950. I had already decided what I was wearing and I did NOT want to deal with picking out a new outfit (because that would add at least another 10 minutes onto my getting ready time), so I decided to go to Walmart to purchase some pantyhose. I then had to put on my pantyhose IN the Walmart parking lot, because duh, I had to be wearing them when I walked in. I wasn't going to get to the office and be like, "Hi. Can you show me the bathroom so I can put on my pantyhose? Thanks." So yeah, my professional career got off to a wonderfully sophisticated start.

I got to the office right on time. It's nice, because I know two of the guys starting with me. One was in the MAcc program with me and the other guy interned with me in 2008, so it was nice to see him again, too. We basically just spent the morning hearing about random stuff and taking a tour of the office, etc. We had a conference call with the woman in charge of our schedules. We also got our schedules from now until the first week in February. Let me just have a chat about my schedule.

So it's pretty much expected that you'll work at least one busy season as an auditor. Generally this means January-March, since most clients have a December 31 year end. However, the Columbus office has all these random year end clients, so our busy seasons are all over the place. SOMEHOW I got scheduled two busy seasons back-to-back, which will be just... amazing (note the sarcasm). I'm the only new hire assigned to the first of my two clients, and they need me during the week that all the other new hires are having another week of training. Somehow this means that I'll be attending training in Dallas with other random Texans. Like... what? How on earth did you pick Dallas, Texas as my training spot?! Bizarre. So yeah, that will be interesting. I've also been assigned a couple of inventories already. This basically means I'll be going BY MYSELF to random warehouses and acting like I know what I'm talking about... and I'll be counting stuff. Lots of stuff. As in... just... opening boxes and counting. And if a box is wrong (aka it says there's 25 shirts and there's only 24), then I'll have to choose another FIVE boxes to count. Oh, did I mention these are done on the weekend? YAY MY LIFE!

What this means for me is that I will be MIA from around the time of my birthday (ugh) through at least Valentine's Day. I was told I would probably be expected to work the weekend of Megan and Jake's wedding, but have no fear, I put a stop to that. And I don't really think they can force me to take a vacation day on a SATURDAY, so that's good. I just have to clear it with my engagement team, but I'm sure it'll be okay. Thank goodness. I'm going to need to DRINK that weekend for sure.

This means that the entire holiday season for me will be slightly less than holiday-like. I'll be working at least 50-55 hours a week. In January, they've got me scheduled for 55 hours a week for 3 weeks. You know when you already know 3 months in advance that you'll be working 15 hours of overtime a week it's going to be a FUN job.

Sigh. I'm trying not to stress about this. I just REALLY love the holidays and now I'm not even going to get to enjoy them. Aside from the inventories I already know about, I'm 'on-call' 12/17 to 1/7 (on the weekends) to run to whatever inventory needs done. It's not just me, it's all 8 of the people I'm starting with, but still. Like... this means I could be called New Year's Eve to go do an inventory. And that's actually VERY likely, because tons of companies take inventory on December 31 or January 1. I'll also not be allowed to take off any days the week of Thanksgiving (except the day of, obviously), because my first client's busy season kind of peaks that week.

So goodbye to my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve and Day, and Valentine's Day. I'll hopefully see you next year.

Anyway. As I said, I'm trying not to stress but it's not working very well.

Perks of my job? Many. Great benefits, a pretty good 401(k) plan, awesome people (seriously, they're all so fun and friendly), lots of office activities (happy hours, sports leagues, community service), a pretty decent salary, aaaaaaaaand my CPA bonus. As soon as I submit my paperwork showing that I passed the tests, I will get a pretty freaking awesome bonus. Yayayayay I CANNOT wait!!!

So in summary, I'm going to despise the hours I'll be working, but I'll be working with really great people, so hopefully it'll go by quickly. Apparently I lucked out and got on an AWESOME team for my first big client so thank goodness for that.

I'm off to Cleveland tonight for two days of orientation (getting our laptops, explaining benefits, etc), and then back here for the weekend, then to Cincinnati for a week of audit training, and then onto my first job! Eeek!