Is accounting really boring, or has virtually the entire human race just been getting it all wrong since the beginning of time?!

Spock the Vulcan CPAI’ve noticed on Twitter a bunch of tweets from younger people complaining that accounting is boring. This may very well be true for those who are not accountants. Non-accountants include those individuals who once loved accounting until they took, and were flunking, intermediate accounting in college and then switched their major to marketing, a much less challenging discipline than accounting, to say the least. I suspect that they are the main culprits spreading this libelous fiction on Twitter that accounting is boring (and, by implication, that CPAs are nerds, but that is an entirely different libelous fiction, for which we in class action intend to sue).

Don’t you remember when the Marketing Department would sponsor a Halloween Costume Party, and would add a handwritten note at the bottom of your invitation saying, “just come as you are: you don’t need a costume”? Marketing people can be so petty and mean spirited. They call themselves Marketers, but we accountants know what they really are: salespeople! Don’t you just hate salespeople?! Doesn’t everybody hate salespeople, except salespeople? (But then, I have heard, that on occasion they are not so fond of salespeople either, especially when they find themselves the recipients of a plethora of sales calls during the dinner hour.)

There are two schools of thought as to why some individuals, when stroking a debit or a credit, experience ecstasy and others vomit before suffering a cardiac arrest. The Pavlovian Institute of Salivation Studies (aka, PISS) asserts that CPAs love accounting because of the presence of a gene that non-CPAs lack. They based their findings on a series of tests conducted on 100 Russian female CPAs with thick ankles, who both sweated and salivated while debiting and crediting all night long.

On the other hand, the Freudianists argue that there is no such gene; rather, they argue one’s love or hatred of accounting stems from early childhood experiences, basing their argument on Freud’s theory found in his “Masochistic Pleasure Principle”, which asserts that anyone experiencing ecstasy while reading tomes of FASBs, GAASs, Regs, Codes, etc., must have experienced in early childhood both the Electra and the Oedipal complexes, resulting in a very confused, sad, miserable human being. As we all know, Freud himself was a very confused, sad, miserable human being, which explains why he was such an excellent accountant although he kept confusing the terms debit and credit as he did the sexes and the entire civilized world for over a century; however, he did rake in millions of shekels from all of his nutty theories as well as from all of those sexually repressed, nutty idiots who believed them, again attesting to his love of accounting.

Initially I believed that that Masochistic Pleasure Principle theory accounted for my love life in college. Women that I dated in college while pursuing my accounting degree lapsed into comas, never to be heard from again. Frankly, I found that behavior strange, if not down right rude. That Houdini phenomenon puzzled me for a very long while, thinking it was due to my cologne. But then one night while I was reading a passage from FASB 8 to my date at the drive-in movie, it occurred to me—after feeling a draft coming from the passenger side of the car as a result of its door being left wide open—that perhaps not everyone shared my passion for accounting. And I was right!

It was then that I came to the realization that our love or hatred for accounting stemmed not from any Freudian psychoanalytic theory based on mommie and daddie sex (although I swear that my CPE notes on accounting and auditing have enhanced my virility much more so than that viagra that I have been taking daily for 10 years) but rather on our hitler-birthdaygenetic code. After reading that earth-shattering genetic treatise, “Mein Kampf”, written by a somewhat controversial Austrian social-engineering theorist — who advocated genetic cleansing to the nth degree of infinity — I reached the conclusion that either you’ve got the good genes or you don’t have the good genes. If you’ve got the good genes, you definitely love accounting and would never, ever find it boring. If you don’t have the good genes, you are a loser and you will always find accounting and accountants boring.

kirk-spock-tribblesAs CPAs, we have the good genes and therefore belong to an elite, master, Aryan race, similar to the Vulcans, of which Spock is an exemplary example as well as an excellent accountant. Do you recall that it was only Spock who counted the number of Tribbles in the episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles”? No small coincidence there.

Conclusion: those who lack this gene are inferior to us accountants and are in really big trouble, according to the author of “Mein Kampf”, whatever his name is.

I hope that this article has shed some light on why all those morons out there in Twitter Land find accounting so boring.

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice. For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.

Have a tax or an accounting question? Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants. For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified.


If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

About William Brighenti

William Brighenti is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and Certified Business Valuation Analyst. Bill began his career in public accounting in 1979. Since then he has worked at various public accounting firms throughout Connecticut. Bill received a Master of Science in Professional Accounting degree from the University of Hartford, after attending the University of Connecticut and Central Connecticut State University for his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. He subsequently attended Purdue University for doctoral studies in Accounting and Quantitative Methods in Business. Bill has instructed graduate and undergraduate courses in Accounting, Auditing, and other subjects at the University of Hartford, Central Connecticut State University, Hartford State Technical College, and Purdue University. He also taught GMAT and CPA Exam Review Classes at the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center and at Person-Wolinsky, and is certified to teach trade-related subjects at Connecticut Vocational Technical Schools. His articles on tax and accounting have been published in several professional journals throughout the country as well as on several accounting websites. William was born and raised in New Britain, Connecticut, and served on the City's Board of Finance and Taxation as well as its City Plan Commission. In addition to the blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified, Bill writes a blog, "The Barefoot Accountant", for the Accounting Web, a Sift Media publication.
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One Response to Is accounting really boring, or has virtually the entire human race just been getting it all wrong since the beginning of time?!

  1. Pingback: Is accounting really boring, or has virtually the entire human race just been getting it all wrong since the beginning of time?! | Find the stream — Vind de stream

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