The Very Modern Accountant
The Very Modern Accountant
By Lionel Walsh
Once upon a time, children, a long time ago, accountants wrote letters. They received letters too. Every weekday morning, there was great excitement when the mail arrived. Envelopes were opened with the gold letter-opener to reveal their interesting contents. Holes were carefully punched in each letter using a hole-punch. There were two-hole hole-punches, three-hole hole-punches and even, believe it or not, four-hole hole-punches. Each letter was filed in the appropriate folder by guiding the prongs in the folder through the holes in the letters. The folders were then taken to a room called the Records Room.
Sometimes, a letter could not be found when needed. It might have been in the wrong place in the Records Room or it might have been on some-one’s desk. On these occasions, there was pandemonium as people searched their own desks for the errant letter, all the while being certain that they did not have it, while at the same time harbouring strong suspicions about who the culprit might be.
In one instance, a secret camera was installed above the desk of an accountant. The camera recorded the fact that this particular accountant spent eight hours in a single week looking for letters that were actually on his desk at the time.
On another occasion, an accountant went to work on a Sunday and spent seven hours flicking through paper files until he found an important letter which had somehow slipped into the wrong file.
Accountant would write letters in longhand or dictate into a machine called a Dictaphone. Ladies known as typistes would then sandwich a piece of carbon paper between two pieces of white paper and roll the lot into a machine called a typewriter which made a clickety-clack sound as the typiste rapidly and expertly typed her letter. The clickety-clack sounds reverberated throughout the building. This noise was very satisfying because it signified a busy and productive office.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. Letters dried up. The gold letter-opener sat neglected in its pigeonhole. Typistes disappeared. The Records Room became an office, because a Records Room with no records was otherwise a room.
The paperless office had arrived.
Emails replaced letters. The Very Modern Accountant can file or retrieve emails with a few tiny twitches of his index finger. He no longer has to detach his derriere from his plush executive chair in order to function efficiently. All his records are accessible in something called The System. Of course, the accountant has no idea what “The System” is, but this matters not one whit. It is not necessary to understand pistons and crankshafts to be able to drive a car.
Sometimes, the System “runs slow”. After a finger-twitch, it might take three, or even four, seconds for a page to load onto one of the accountant’s huge screens. On these occasions, the Very Modern Accountant drums his fingers on his desk and thinks “Heavens, The System is slow today. Is it even worth coming to work with a system this slow?”
