Life update!

Not so fun stuff first: work is fine. Long hours still to come (I'm working on average until about 7 PM every night now... next week will turn into 9/10 PM), but it's all going well so far. I feel like I've learned a LOT in the past month and a half, but I know I still have 23094820823 things to learn. I've got my own parts of the audit that I'm in charge of, which is terrifying but also nice to have my own thing to work on. Granted, my senior is basically doing the work with me because I don't know how to do any of it on my own, but still. It's nice to 'own' something. I also have a lot more things on my plate now, which is both good and bad. Before, I would finish my assigned task and then just sit around waiting for another. Now I have enough tasks that I'm never really sitting around waiting. It makes the day go by a LOT faster. Getting food is also going well... I haven't terribly messed up anything yet. I'm also not getting food two times a day anymore, because a staff 2 has generously offered to trade off with me every meal. Yay! And finally, I think I'm starting to slooooowwwllyyyyy build some client contacts, which is nice. I received my first phone call from a client today (eeeeeek), so that was fun. I had to be like, 'Um... I'll have to talk with Jen about that..." because I didn't know what the answer was but still. I felt like kind of a big deal. Plus, I was able to answer PART of the question, so I don't think the client thought I was a complete idiot. And my coworkers are SO NICE. I just love them. It makes having to stay late SO MUCH more enjoyable.

Slight worry that came up today, though. My senior on this engagement I'll be on in bufu Indiana from January-February IM-ed me and told me that they are going to put us in a room that basically has no heat. Um, hi. That will not work for me. She said she spent last winter there and literally spent the entire day in her coat, scarf, boots, and GLOVES. She did work in her GLOVES. Also, they wouldn't let her bring a space heater. I'm so screwed. I asked her if she thought it'd be okay if I brought an electric blanket, and she said she'd have to ask. FML. Oh, and this is ALSO the town in bufu Indiana whose only claim to fame is MAKING CASKETS. I kid you not. I really kid you not. Caskets. Alsoooo, they have three places to eat in town, one of which is a deli inside a gas station. Sweet. .....send me care packages?

Other not-so-fun thing in life... I randomly have bronchitis. Who knows. All I know is that Wednesday night I turned deathly ill and could barely move. Friday I went to see a nurse practitioner who tried to diagnose me with like 18 things I was NOT there about, and finally told me i MAY have bronchitis and prescribed me amoxicilin. It's taking me forever to recover, but I'm finally feeling better! I have basically every flu/ear infection/sinus infection/bronchitis symptom you can think of (except stomach issues), so I'm pretty worn out still. I left work early both Thursday and Friday, which was kind of frustrating. I hate feeling like a slacker after only being there a month. Boo.

Onto the better things in life. Aka everything but work and being sick!

Donny and I early-celebrated my birthday on Sunday! We went to Las Margaritas so I could get my staple of beef and cheese nachos :) No margarita, though, since I felt like death and am on antibiotics :( So sad I couldn't get one. Then we came back to our place and he gave me my present, which was this AWESOME wine cooler!!!!! I'm SO excited. I've wanted one of these forever. Wine and cheese night SOON!!!


The blue light is the coolest part fo sho.

I get another birthday celebration next Sunday with my family, too! My mom's lasagna = best birthday meal EVER. Mmmm. Also, possible funfetti cake... it's going to be amazing.

Then, somewhere in the midst of working 60+ hour weeks, there will be Thanksgiving and Megan's bridal shower and the OSU/Michigan game and maybe the 05 reunion and MIAMI FRIENDS!!!! :) Soooo excited.

Okay. Laundry time. Ugh, I'm so domestic now.

Newbie mistakes this past week:

1. Well, this isn't completely my fault. But it made me feel like shit. Sooo I was supposed to be filling in an excel file... pulling info from ANOTHER excel file... but the numbers weren't really matching up... long story short, my senior told me (i thought) to change the format of one of the excel files. this ended up taking me 3-4 hours. afterwards, he told me i shouldn't have done it. i had to undo it. and since it took me 3-4 hours, i had clearly saved multiple times and there was just no undoing (or control-z-ing) the whole thing. he wasn't being a jerk about it or anything, but i legitimately was about to punch someone. there was just a clear miscommunication that happened somewhere.

2. We're having a happy hour for my engagement team tomorrow night. I was told today to send out an email to the whole team (about 15-20 people) about it. I sent it to everyone, including the partner. My SENIOR MANAGER (so like... right below partner status) comes out and asks me to please resend the email with the correct address this time. Apparently there is a NEW bar by the SAME NAME that is JUST DOWN THE ROAD from the bar I thought I was looking up. This new bar also does not exist on the internet, so googling it did not pull up anything except the OLD bar, which I obviously put in the email. Sigh. So now I have to send an 'oops!' email to everyone. Including the partner. I also have to somehow find the new bar's location, even though it does not exist on Google. Bahhhh.

That's about it. Sigh. Newbie mistakes. They are so annoying. Not that I'd rather be making REAL mistakes, but these mistakes are just stupiddddd.

In happier news, I am pumped for SVU tonight. Work isn't terrible as long as there is something to look forward to every night!

Work, Volume II

Another post about work – apologies. However, it’s the majority whatl I do these days so… oh well!

I think the most awkward thing about working in a large company like mine is that I never know who to go to about anything. So many examples:

• I was in charge of ordering/picking up the food for 20 people for a big meeting yesterday. I was told multiple times that I should not mess this up because these people are serious about their food. Okay, no pressure. I was told Panera would be a good idea – fine with me. I get online and go to their catering menu. There are like a million options. How am I supposed to know what these people want? Is there a budget? I have no idea. WHO DO I ASK?!
• We have an office-wide event next Friday morning that’s pretty much designed solely to have people meet with their ‘counselors’ to go over our yearly goals. For new hires this is pretty important because we haven’t set ours at all, and goals are a HUGE DEAL here. My counselor is pretty insistent that I go, but I’m scheduled to be in Indiana that week. My counselor wants me to go to the meeting, but how do I do that? Do I talk to the counselor and tell him I can’t come? Do I talk to my senior on my engagement in Indiana and tell her I need to leave a day early, even though I’ve been here like 3 weeks and have no power to say something like that whatsoever? Yet again, WHO DO I ASK?!
  

Other slight annoyances:

• I’ll try to make this as short as possible. Basically we keep our prior year work just to have as a reference. In order to signify that it’s prior year work, we go through all the files and put ‘zz’ in front of them. That was my task one morning last week. To go through 200+ files, right click on them, hit ‘rename,’ and type ‘zz’ at the beginning. Seriously. Now, no one told me that the zz needed to be lowercase. I did them all uppercase. Now, literally as I’m typing this, I was told to go through them all and change them to lowercase. Jlskfjw;oierjasf. Seriously?
• I don’t get enough email. I’m sure I won’t be saying that in a year, but like… when I have NOTHING to do, I check my email every 10 seconds. Ugh.
• I have to LEAVE my house at 5:30 AM on Saturday to do an inventory. Enough said. I also have to purchase steel-toed boots to do this inventory. Granted, I get reimbursed since they’re a ‘business expense’ (aka no way in hell would I own them if it weren’t for this inventory), but it’s still an obnoxious thing I have to do in the next few days.
• We aren’t allowed to take vacation from January to March because that’s generally our busy season. However, I am going to be on a busy season in November-December, NOT at the beginning of January. I want to take a couple of days off in mid-January to go to LA, but the scheduler is telling me I can’t without a good reason. Like… that’s not fair. I don’t have the same busy season, therefore, I shouldn’t have to follow that rule. That means I can’t take ANY vacation November-December (because I’ll be in busy season) OR January – March. NOT FAIR. I’m still working with her to get it sorted out but… ugh. The even MORE annoying part is that I’m not scheduled for an engagement those days I want off. No one has picked up my time yet. Therefore I think I should be able to take vacation!!!!!!!! Blah!
• I’m supposed to be in Indiana all next week. Today is Thursday. I still have not heard whether or not we’re actually going. People are supposed to be getting back to me but like… I have to book a hotel. I would also just kind of like to know where I’m going to be next week. If we’re NOT going, I need to find something to do all week which means sending out tons of emails asking for stuff to do.
  

But there seem to be tradeoffs for everything. As annoying as the ‘zz’s were, I also do pretty legit work, like testing fixed asset additions and disposals and preparing flux analyses from quarter to quarter. I realize this means nothing to you if you’re not an auditor, but whatevs. The gist of it is that I’m also getting some good experiences.

I also am realizing that, at least at my lowly level, there are tradeoffs in regards to time worked. I know busy season is going to be balls. I’m talking 55+ hour weeks for multiple weeks. However, I have some downtime now. Even if I’m in the office 8-5 every day, I don’t always have work to do so I get to kind of just hang out. Other days I’ve left a little bit early. So I’m working less than I should be now, but it’ll kind of balance out with busy season. Although it’s not necessarily the ideal work schedule, I’d rather have this than work 55+ hour weeks every single week, which is what I’ll be doing in about 2 years :(

PS if I haven’t said it enough already… don’t plan on seeing me from Thanksgiving to roughly mid-March. FML.

Work summary

Here's a summary about how I feel about work:

1) I am torn about how I feel about being the food bitch. By this I mean the 'new girl' who is sent to get food for everyone else. Sometimes I'm a little offended, because really, I have a Masters degree and shouldn't be going on food runs. However, I also get kind of excited because it's a nice little break in the day when I get to go pick up the food. I get to be by myself for 20 or so minutes, and that's always nice.

2) I have been insanely spoiled since I've been at work. My classmates (aka the people who started with me) have been working 12 hour days, even on Saturdays. I get out at 5 every day because I happen to be on a tiny client who isn't really getting us the stuff we need to work on... therefore there's not much to do. I know I'm going to be hit really hard with busy season, which kind of sucks, but I'm trying to enjoy my easy hours while I can!

3) I'm going to get so fat. There is just no way around that. I eat out every day for lunch. It's basically required that you eat with your teams. I don't really want to be difficult and bring a sack lunch to Applebees, so... guess I'll eat out every day. And then when busy season starts, you eat dinner at work, too, which is ALSO a required team event... meaning I'll be eating bad food then, too. Not to say that I'm the healthiest person in the world, but I definitely do NOT want to eat out 5+ times a week. And on top of eating horribly, I'll also not be able to work out during busy season, since that entails 8 am - 10 pm days six days a week. Sigh.

4) I actually think I like the work so far. So far. I don't think I'll like how MUCH of it I'll be doing soon enough, but at least I like the work. Hopefully this gets me through busy season!

5) I LOVE the people I work with. They are just so friendly and helpful. I ask my senior questions 029380375 times a day and he doesn't care. It makes being a newbie a lot easier.

Welp, time for said work. More later!

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!

Friends

Today was great :) I was able to spend time with Kiley this afternoon, just sitting and talking which is pretty much all we do when we're together haha. Although this afternoon we mixed it up a bit and went DRIVING while talking. I just drove us in circles though haha meh. Anyway, I just am obsessed with the fact that we're able to not see each other for months at a time and then just pick up like we were still at Miami and saw each other for hours every day. Love. love. love. it. Plus there was the bonus of having Jamie call WHILE I was with Kiley so we got to all be on speakerphone together... sigh. So wonderful. Those girls just make my life.

Then I went to Chipotle and to see Charlie St. Cloud with Megan, Katie, and Shelley tonight! (PS Charlie St. Cloud is dumb. Don't see it. And this is coming from a girl who likes pretty much every movie she sees.) It's just so nice to be able to go out with the girls and just chat about all sorts of different life topics :) It probably makes me happier than it should haha. Like, I just really really love girl talk. And I feel like we're growing up now, so we have more grown-up discussions and it's so nice to have people to grow up with, if that makes any sense. We're going through the same things so it's nice to have people to relate to.

Then after I got home, Shelley and Katie were still hanging out and I realized I shouldn't be lame even though I have to get up for work in like less than 7 hours haha. Oh well. So I went back out to meet up with them at Johnny Rockets and we just stayed and chatted for a couple of hours. It's just nice to be able to talk about your feelings with people, as mundane as that sounds. But think about it - do you really have people that LISTEN to you on a day to day basis? Who are REALLY interested in what you're doing or saying? If so, I think you're lucky because I think that we've all become so self-absorbed that we don't pay attention to other people as much as we should. So when I get to have moments where people DO listen to me, and not just my stupid stories about my day-to-day events, but my actual feelings, it gives me hope for the world haha. And it makes me feel loved. It's just little moments like these that get me through :) It was nice to be able to open up to Shelley and Katie in a more intimate discussion (as opposed to a large group setting) and to actually talk about our feelings and our fears and what we're going through in life. It's just so refreshing to be able to get stuff off your chest like that, and I think girls nights are an absolute must. But small girls nights... not like 15 girl girls nights haha. 15 girls is like... go out to the club girls night. Which is ALSO enjoyable, but I'm getting completely off topic. My point is that I think everyone should get together with 1-3 girlfriends every once in awhile and just spill your guts. It's pretty therapeutic.

I still wish I had like ONE girlfriend that was my BEST friend and I was her BEST friend, though, you know? I've always wanted that. Like, just one person who ALWAYS had your back and who didn't have any other best friends, if that makes sense haha. I realize that sounds selfish lol but... it's true! I've just never had that. Obviously I have several wonderful awesome girlfriends, but I haven't ever had one that was just MY best friend. That might sound petty, but growing up it's what I always wanted. A girlfriend with whom you didn't have to discuss what you were doing that night, because it was clear that the two of you would be hanging out... a girlfriend who you could just always count on for everything. And a girlfriend who didn't have a bunch of other best friends. But I guess as much as it might make you want to puke, Donny's kind of become that person for me, which I guess is okay too :) He just came a little later on in life. And I, of course, still have my friends, and hopefully always will!

Okay I really do need to get to bed, yikes. But in summary: today was full of girlfriends and I loved it :)

Blah

Fingers crossed that after Friday, I will have NO MORE UPDATES about the stupid CPA exam... meaning hopefully I pass the section I'm taking on Friday. If I can pass this one, and if I passed the one I took in July, then I'll be FINISHED!

Oh wait, no I won't be, because then I still can't call myself a CPA until I've had 2 years of experience. UGHHHH. It never ends!!

Anyway, studying sucks even more than usual. I've just completely lost any and all energy I once had for studying. And now that Donny's home for GOOD (!!!!), I have even less motivation. Hang out with my boyfriend who I haven't been in the same city with for more than 3 months at a time since 2005... or study? FML.

In other news, I cannot WAIT to be done at the call center, either! It's getting to be that hectic time when kids are about to start leaving for college... and of course people wait until like, the DAY before their student moves to be like 'Hey, I need to order linens... also, I need them here tomorrow at 6 AM because that's when we're leaving." Like... no. Sorry. That can't happen. Today was especially bad. I had a lady cry on the phone within the first 45 minutes of my shift. Seriously. People get REALLY REALLY upset about linens for some reason. Don't they know they can just drive to Bed, Bath, and Beyond??!?! and on top of that lady, I had three sup calls (short for 'supervisor'... ones where they ask for my supervisor because apparently I'm incompetent) and our systems just completely shut down for about an hour. Phew. Like I said, can't wait to be finished!

Donny's back and it's basically the greatest. I haven't actually been able to see him a ton because I've been studying so much, but the few times I've seen him have just been great. However, as we had predicted, we ended up hating each other yesterday. We were completely right!!! We predicted we'd despise each other by August 3 hahah. Meh. We're better now. We just aren't very good at being physically near each other haha. It will work itself out.

Other than that... let's see. Moving's coming up soon, HOORAY! Donny and I have been discussing cable/internet packages, etc, and figuring out utilities. I forgot that we're moving into a place thats exactly twice the square footage of my current apartment, which means twice the gas/electric bills :( Boooo spending money.

Also, August 21 is coming up, which will be a blast! We're getting a cabin in Hocking Hills with some of the Westerville crew to celebrate Donny and Jake's birthdays! Can't waaaaaaittt, it'll be so nice to get together with everyone before we move in!

Other exciting August things:
Kiley's in town (but I can't see her until I'm done studying, boo)
Jamie's ALMOST in town
probably going to see the Titanic exhibit at COSI with the fam!
Wicked with Donny and the fam!!!!!!!

Yayayay Friday at 2pm will be the start of a great month :)