Some careers attract people because they’re full of excitement. Being a skydiving instructor means action every single day, and being a firefighter requires bravery, quick thinking and a willingness to protect others. Meanwhile, other jobs are enticing because of how much income they’ll bring home or because they offer plenty of benefits. And some are simply sought after because they’re predictable and won’t ever cause an adrenaline rush.

One field that’s often stereotyped as incredibly boring and monotonous is accounting. But this list might actually change your opinion on the job. Accountants of Reddit have been trying to beat the allegations that their work lives are mundane, so we’ve gathered their “wildest” tales down below. Enjoy reading through these stories that might just make you reconsider how you view accounting (or more likely, reinforce the views you already held), and be sure to upvote the ones that you find most amusing!

#1

A few years back I was doing taxes for a client that were quite complex and I stayed up past midnight.

Image credits: anon

#2

Sometimes I like to see how many M&Ms I can fit in my mouth.

Image credits: laxeps17

#3

One time I ran out of narrow post-it flags and switched to wide flags. It was too much for me so I searched the floor for more narrow flags.

Image credits: its_still_good

#4

I tried my hand at accounting during an internship. It was a dire mistake that I won’t be repeating. There was no talking, no music, nothing – I was afraid to chew my mid-morning snack for disturbing the silence.

Anyway, one day my colleague told me he was getting a new car that weekend and was obviously very excited. I was thinking, this must be the most exciting thing thats happened to him in months. So I asked: “ooo what are you getting?”

him: “It’s the same car as I have now, just newer”

me: “…oh okay, well, what colour?”

him: “…the same colour”

HOW BORING DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO BUY THE SAME CAR, IN THE SAME COLOUR?!

TL;DR: Accountants are indeed mundane.

Image credits: CloudyGiraffeApple

#5

I’m a corporate accountant. Nothing crazy really happens but you do learn which of your coworkers are morons. Since I review financials, I also get to learn which managers don’t understand how their bonus works.

Image credits: anon

#6

Sometimes when I’m really hacked off with someone I sign my email with “Regards” instead of “Best Regards”.

Image credits: Tmesis26

#7

As an auditor, I like to round numbers to the nearest dollar before doing anything else.

Image credits: BayStateBlue

#8

One day I felt like going back to the old fashioned pen and paper route instead of excel and I got a papercut. I only cried for 20 minutes.

Image credits: bawzzz

#9

I used to take a power nap in the handicapped bathroom stall during busy season. That’s how tired I was. A manager before I was there would often work until 5:00 AM, go home and be back by 10:00.

The crazy stuff isn’t so much from work, but the clients. We had a doctor who hadn’t paid taxes in years that wanted to use his motorcycle as a business-use vehicle. The auditors once told a story of counting at least five shoe boxes full of cash.

Image credits: pug_fugly_moe

#10

I worked as a project accountant for an engineering/design firm for a while, when the job market was bad. I basically tracked the profits and losses of projects as they were implemented. The first thing I noticed was that the sales people would underbid projects and we would end up LOSING money to complete them.

What happened was that when I brought these cases up the sales people would issue the client a bunch of fake change orders for $5,000-$10,000 a piece and say that if they didn’t pay them we would walk off the project. 90% of the time it worked, and these change orders ended up bringing the projects in the green. They never told me they were doing this, I just saw them coming through and they never really made sense so I always questioned them. Finally, the VP told me what was going on and to keep quiet about it.

Another thing was that I noticed a small amount of funding being transferred to other accounts. Like $100-$200 here and there. I couldn’t track what those accounts were for, but I was able to compile an inventory of every instance that happened and it ended up summing up to around $10,000,000 over the course of about 20 years. I built a report, showed it to the owner of the company, and it was determined that the previous CFO was embezzling money into offshore accounts. I was mentioned in the local paper and the FBI arrested the previous CFO.

Image credits: anon

#11

This one time the office calculator stopped working…and you can guess the rest! Wild times, wild times!

Image credits: sstterry1

#12

I wrote off a bank difference of 34 pence once. Didn’t even consult my boss.

Image credits: Brad_Wiggins

#13

The most exciting day of my career was the day I had to replace tape, staples, and the paper in my adding machine. What a wild time .

Image credits: undeniablybuddha

#14

I once had a discussion with a mathematician about whose job used more mathematics. He explained vector calculus on curved manifolds, and I just sat there. Then I showed him exerpts from the tax code and his brain exploded.

Image credits: SurprisedPotato

#15

On my first day of work, all the newly hired staff accountants were given free meal vouchers so we could all sit in the cafeteria and get to know each other. Ya girl can’t resist a jello cup topped with cool whip, so I picked one out of the fridge and sat down with another dude who happened to have picked up a jello cup too. Twinsies! We started chatting and as he dug into his jello cup, he said the cool whip tasted off and he pushed his aside. Then I dug into mine and I couldn’t discern anything was off so I polished the whole cup off like a giddy fat kid.

Fast forward towards the end of the day, the cool whip gave me the worst bubble guts ever. I had no idea where the bathroom was on that floor, so just I sped walked/ran to the nearest door praying that it was a bathroom and I started swiping my access card against the key pad like crazy tryna bust into the bathroom.

The frantic *BEEP BEEP BEEP* of key pad caught the attention of a senior accountant, so she walked up behind me and asked me what I was doing. I froze and internally I was like “S**t this is not a good look,” so I wiped the sweat off my forehead before I turned around and nonchalantly said “Oh darn I think haven’t been granted access to the whole building yet. My card can’t even swipe me into the bathroom. ¯_(ツ)_/¯” Then she started biting her lips so hard they turned white and she stifled a laugh.

I looked up at the door sign and it was either a telecom closet or electrical closet, I forget. My forehead and armpit turned into sprinklers and I didn’t know what to say, so I awkwardly left her hanging and I hurriedly shuffled away looking for the bathroom.

Image credits: neymagica

#16

Not the normal type of accounting but…

I kind of fell into accounting for films. The films shoot for about a month and you do a bit before and after. No particular stories but let me tell you it’s weird to go from a film that has a shoestring budget to a multi-million dollar one the next week. You go from sitting on set because you have so little work you’re bored to working 17 hour days, not leaving your hotel room and arguing/shouting with A-listers on the phone.

#17

I’m working 37 days straight for busy season.

#18

I recomended we post a journal to the control account without it hitting the sales ledger. They only went and bloody did it! Crazy times.

#19

How many companies I went on audits for that had computers running from 10-20 years ago. I’m talking Windows 95, Windows 2000, etc. with full Internet access and everything. Meanwhile they would have an IT Department. Like what? Shouldn’t they do something about this?

#20

In the Office we sometimes compete who can carry the most Folders and files.

I always win.

#21

A friend who was an accountant related this story: Was doing the taxes for a farmer. Small family farm in the UK, been in the business for generations. All went well, yet as they were wrapping up, the farmer happened to mention ‘the other money’. The conversation went like this:
Friend: “What other money”
Farmer “Well you know the money i earn after work”
Friend “What..?”

Turns out the farmer had the idea in his head that he only owed taxes on 8 hours a day that he worked on the farm. If he worked more than 8 hours a day, well that was his money and he didn’t feel that he owed taxes on it, as it was done ‘after work’.

AND HE HAD BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS.

My friend was like “oh god, no..”

They had to go back, calculate the taxes owed, hire a lawyer, meet with the authorities. It took ages to sort out.

#22

Not a CPA but work for a Big 4. You’d be surprised how much us auditors drink. Also how often.

#23

I worked in the finance office of an amusement park. I had to depreciate a dead swan over a period of five years.

#24

I worked under my Aunt’s firm to get job experience, between 2011 and 2013. Since I can’t go into too much detail, for obvious reasons, I’ll just list my favorite threeç

* I was assigned to putting together a coherent file for a guy who was so far behind on his taxes that he literally had his own, personal IRS agent.
* We were auditing a group that had absolutely no idea what the word organization meant. We’d go and look for a check to validate and have to ask the guy there to find it because it may have been under A for Administrative Expense or S for the company name, or G because it was for a gas purchase…
* It was always fun to hear the guys come in and say something like “I forgot to tell ya last time that I bought a 250k dollar tractor. It just slipped my mind.”

While not “crazy” the most enjoyable aspect was doing audits, because we’d have 6-8 people there and we’d bounce our work and problems off of each other.

#25

Maybe I chose the wrong job field. I’m tattooed with bright red hair, I’m buying a hellcat, I go on vacations and I enjoy an exciting life.

Oh well. I also enjoy filling out forms and order instead of chaos.

#26

Audit courthouses for a living. Actually have crazy stories!

-Bookkeeper stole 2 million dollars by stuffing money into a large suitcase under her desk. Apparently no one noticed she use to walk in and out with a large suitcase time to time

-Bookkeper stole money by stuffing her bra and dirty panties

-Probation officer sold a gun to his probationer (who was a prostitute) in exchange for “services”. She sold the gun for d***s

-Noticed there were no evidence in the evidence room, found tons of guns stored on top of bookshelves.

-bags of money in the evidence room were ripped open with money missing. Weapons were left out with dried blood on it (specifically a weapon that was used to cut open prostitutes by some sick f**k)

-while auditing some cases, found my exs mug shot. (Best part).

#27

I worked as an accounts administrator – got sacked for breaking into the company kitchen, cooking chicken nuggets and throwing them around the dining room.

#28

Our accountant told me that he’d do one of his cute female client’s taxes for free just to “check out her assets.”.

#29

=IF(H48″”,IF(Q48=””,TODAY()-H48,Q48-H48),””)

What’s more exciting than a perfectly placed excel formula?

Nothing is the correct answer.

#30

Work is boring however…

Few years back I was working in Aberdeen and was walking to the bosses office with some files, saw what I though was my colleague stooped down looking through a pile of files on the floor. Decided in my brilliance that I would jab him in the size with the files I was holding, to my complete horror I just done this to the boss…argh never ran so fast down the corridor. Had to walk passed his office 5 minutes later after I had stopped laughing and explain

Same job, had to call a client to discuss his return and get the documents signed as it was very close to deadline day. So rang his home address which was answered by his young son, who recognised my Geordie accent and mistook me for his dad. This proceeded to 5 minutes of me trying to tell his kid I wasn’t his dad ( realise how bad that sounds ) and him telling me what he had done at school , after he had finished he then decided to pass me on to his brother where I had to endure the same discussions and same response from me that I wasn’t actually his dad. Finally I thought I was going to be passed to his mother after I had asked several time I was put on the phone to a young girl who couldn’t have been more than 2-3 years old and had a conversation about how much she missed me etc. At this point I had been on the phone for around 15 minutes trying to explain to three kids I wasn’t actually there dad and quite a large number of colleague had gathered to listen to my attempt at to speak to an adult. After the 15 minutes of nonsense I finally get on to my clients wife and im honestly not sure who was more embarrassed about the whole thing me or her. Worst thing was I had to visit the client on my way home ( travelling back to Newcastle ) to get the returns signed. they ended up making me stay for tea and I actually had a place at the table next to the kids hahaha…

#31

My sister in law is a chartered accountant. She had to count the cheeses in a giant cheese warehouse in Cheddar.

#32

Once our Cashflow wouldn’t balance so I spent 4 hours looking for a mistake. It was a cell formula that was wrong on one of the sheets. Also once my petty cash tin didn’t balance so I recounted everything and it seems the first time I had miscounted my 10p’s (I counted a 3rd time to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake on the second go).

#33

One time Bill couldn’t find his 10 key after his lunch break. But I hid it from him before he got back! Haha I still crack up about that.

#34

Don’t let these joking comments fool you. Some are serious, sure, but most are joking. Accountants can be exciting. Working for a public accounting firm allowed me to drink the most for free out of any other job I’ve ever had. Big audit done? Drinks with the client. Busy season done? Drink. Big recruiting event? Drink, and hang around with fresh college grads. Christmas party? Drink.

All of it free. I’ve had more free open bars through public accounting than I’ve ever had through weddings.

Now I work in industry, and my manager just bought a collector’s edition Porsche. I don’t want to go into details for identy’s sake, but it’s a several decades old car still worth six figures.

#35

I found out my boss was embezzling money. Turns out he was doing it for the mob and they killed him and were going to come after me and my buddy next. We made them think my boss was still alive by using him like a puppet and then the cops caught them.

#36

One time I switched from Flavia to K-cups…. I switched back. I couldn’t handle that much change.

#37

NYS Tax auditor here. One time someone got fired and had to be escorted out of the building by the troopers. We talked about it for like 3 days. It was super exciting.

Also, a few years ago during the World Cup, Cuomo gave us a 2 hour paid lunch to watch the US, so we went to a bar, had some drinks, and went back to work.

We’re just a thrilling bunch.

#38

My grandfather used to work as the accountant for an upper class military prep school in upstate new York. A lot of the schools customers would pay their entire tuition in 20$ bills, so much so that he bought several bill counters to handle the amount. When he had to go and testify at several trials of said customers and they asked him if he ever found the payments suspicious, he said that these payments were the only ones consistently on time.

#39

This one time, I asked an audit client for something, and they gave it to me promptly and with *no* fuss *or* pushback!

Nah, jk, everyone hates auditors. I can’t wait for busy season to be over in May.

#40

Now that we have quite a few acountants gathered. I’d like to get an understanding of the basics, since it’s something that’s crucial to almost any profession. Do you have any tips on where to get started, I’m guessing it depends on what country you live in, so I’m from Belgium.

Thanks in advance.

#41

I’m not an accountant but did my work experience there where they legitimately tasked me with filing a couple businesses end of year reports. I was 14 or 15. I bet now they still look back and wonder at the week that like 4 of their clients went down for fiddling their tax records. I had absolutely zero idea about what I was doing.

Edit- just reread this and realised it sounds a bit more serious than it is- to be clear, I have no knowledge about whether or not any businesses got in any trouble.

#42

My mom is a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) who works for a specific non profit company now, but for years bounced between different nonprofits doing work for not much money (in comparison to other accountants), because these were nonprofits and they didn’t have much money to pay her with. A lot of her stories center around how she saved X group of people a ton of money because they were absolutely terrible with money and taxes. And a lot of those stories end with her having made friends with very important people, which has some fantastic side benefits. She once mentioned to one of her clients that I wanted to go see a musical at [theater that is the equivalent of Broadway in our region of the country] but she couldn’t get tickets because I told her too late and the play was sold out. About two days later, this client comes in and hands her two tickets to the show I wanted to go see. Mom was astonished and asked how they got the tickets. The client just shrugged and said “We know some people at [theater]” It later came out that they were like on the board for it or was a major shareholder or something like that. Mom tried to pay them back and they just said “It’s a gift. You do very good work and have saved us a lot of money, so the least we can do is send your daughter to the theater” So I got to see a great musical with my mom for absolutely free. Things like this happened several other times.

TL;DR: People like it when you save them a bunch of money and will give you gifts and arrange for impossible favors like taking your young daughter to see a sold out musical.

#43

A coworker walked up to me and asked for a favor. I was excited because it’s a slow day, and I was up for doing something work related for once.

They ask me to open the lid on their water bottle because they couldn’t get it open.

These are the most exciting parts of my day.

#44

I once spent a half hour trying to explain to a woman the difference between an applied and an unapplied payment. She got angry and told me it’s my job to “sort it out”.

#45

I worked for a major Toy Manufacturer for about 15 years. They have a write-off policy were claims (deductions/shortpayments) that were deducted from an invoice, that were under $100 could be instantly credited off their account. The reason is that the time it took to resolve the claim, did not exceed the amount of salary paid to employees to resolve it. So on any given day, deductions would roll in and just be auto-credited to clear their account.

However, I was noticing that one company was taking large amounts of deductions, in the hundreds, and they were all for $8.30, or $16.60, etc.. stacks and stack of deductions rolling thru. I asked my Boss if I could suspend the automatic write-off on the account so I could investigate what was happening. He said no. Thought it was a waste of time.

So I brought the work home. In about a month’s time this company had deducted about 33,000 claims totaling $8.30, all coming from various their various warehouse locations all over the USA. The claims were legit, BUT, they had also taken a duplicate LARGE deduction at the Corporate level, for a cumulative country-wide recall of the same item. They just forgot to tell their warehouses that their Corporate team would be deducting the claim. So we received 33,000+ instances of double-dipping, all coming in under the wire. No one noticed but me.

I put my case together, gathered evidence, and sent the company a letter. They repaid back to us an approx. total of $275,000.00.
My boss said, “I’m not paying you overtime for that work.”

Asleep yet? Accounting is boring, unless you get off on stuff like this. Which I do.

#46

Yes but I have learned that the sales department always trumps accounting. At least where I work.

“We have to stop this client from airing commercials. They owe us over $300k going back several years.”

“We need the revenue so we do not get yelled at by corporate. Besides, I’m good friends with the owner.”

The client closed their doors earlier this month and owes my market over $300k and $100k in another market.

#47

Auditor here. Not my story, but a co-worker was out auditing some kind of grain farm. He was testing the existence of some kind of large tractor and there were supposed to be two of them. They show him the first one, he matches up the tractors info to the inventory sheet, all good. Then the client says the second tractor is down the road. They drive him down some back roads for awhile until they get to another tractor. He looks at the tractor’s inventory number and its the exact same as the first one. They thought they could drive him around in circles while they move the tractor and pass it off as a second tractor.

Worst attempt to commit fraud ever.

#48

Corporate tax accountant for a retailer. I get to learn how/why some candy is taxable and some isn’t!

#49

Not an accountant, but helped out a CPA for a while. One time, I was given financial documents that were held together with clothespins. That was pretty crazy.

#50

While not yet an accountant, currently an accounting major at university. Walked into my first accounting class this semester expecting a typical thin, old white male professor in a suit or something similar, but instead got a huge professor with the longest beard I’ve ever seen and tattoos all the way up and down his arms, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Not exactly what I was expecting, but he’s an awesome professor so far and it’s proof that not all accountants are boring & mundane.

#51

Not an accountant but private bookkeeper. Several years ago I went to have a consultation with a business owner, he did retail, rare coins, antique firearms and stuff. I walked into the shop and him and I began to talk in his office. Very paranoid in general, one of those that didn’t want to actually give me numbers or anything. When I had finally convinced him to let me take a look at some of his records he pulled a pistol out of his waistband and placed it on the table, looked at me long and hard and said “if you’re going to work for me you need to carry. It’s not a case of if I get robbed, but when.”

I’m in California, this shop was in a good city, he had security etc. But after he turned down me working remotely I noped out of there real quick. And when I say noped I went home and wrote him an email saying that his business is out of my scope of work.

#52

Ill tell ya what now. I remember this one time when Dwayne goes ” Hey Karl I really need those TCIP-13 reports by 3:00. And I say to him “Dwayne dont you mean the TCIP-14? We stopped using the 13 last week!!”

Hahaha classic Dwayne.

#53

Being a closet alcoholic seems pretty common. Very surprising when you realize it.

Source: work in corporate accounting.

#54

Serious reply. Not an accountant, but in Finance. Accounting processes are hugely important in what I do, so I work closely with accountants.

So, we’re working with a client on improving certain financial processes in their company. Part of those processes is to generate accounting entries based on certain financial activity. What the client tells us to do looks to be irregular and not like anything any of our other clients do. After a bit of digging, we figure out that their process doesn’t comply with regulations. They’re either stupid or criminals. We let them know that what they are doing isn’t kosher. They ignore us, so we report them to their auditors, as we’re obligated to do. A bunch of the people get fired. The end.

#55

The reason why people think it’s boring is because they only know about accountants who work for themselves and do taxes. I started an public accounting internship and went out to lunch 4 times in the first week. You have to enjoy business to like public accounting and then it’s fun.

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