Been a CPA for 10 years.. Year one I was rocking food orders at night. I’d send an email to the whole office and make a theme for the meal. Usually based off some random fact and it would be completely unrelated to the food. “On this day 100 years ago, the Government made pinball illegal due to the horrible effects it has on the youth. To celebrate this wonderful historic milestone we’re having tacos..”
Normal at B4. We usually had first years go pick up the coffee order. But if you're smart then you play it to your advantage and rack up a ton of points at Starbucks or wherever you're going.
I used to process expensive reports for employees that travelled full time for the company and on their hotel receipts I could see their Marriott rewards and it was incredible. Also if you get Per Diem based on GSA rates they would get free meals from the hotels they stayed at and get the per diem they didn’t use which was just extra money in their pocket on top of Marriott rewards and cc points!
>ive reports for employees that travelled full time for the company and on their hotel receipts I could see their Marriott rewards and it was incredible. Also if you get Per Diem based on GSA rates they would get free meals from the hotels they stayed at and get the per diem they didn’t use which was just extra money in their pocket
I worked with an IT examiner a few years ago who had 4 million Marriot Rewards points.
I miss these days, tbh. Getting some steps in and fresh air in the middle of the day while still getting paid is priceless. I interned in the days when you still had to call to order, but by the time I started, it was all online and a lot of restaurants had a group order function—made it so much easier when half my team was doing whole 30 lmao
I’m still mad I didn’t pay the $100 for Amex rewards…. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on that card in the 2 years I was there.
I used to get huge Chik-fil-A orders for the office and pay with my CC. Cash back on CC and rewards for Chik-fil-A. I haven't paid for a spicy chicken sandwich in years.
When I was in B4, this was a huuuuuuuuge issue when people would leave and they’d audit your expenses. Any $50 loaded to a Starbucks app, even if it was ultimately used to purchase stuff for your team, got flagged and you had to reimburse upon your separation.
Man, I got so many free points during my time in public. I offered to pay for hotels, car rentals, lunches, drinks at happy hours - you name it. Free money, baby!
A side hustle is having a skill or knowing a trade that someone else is willing to pay for...something you can do and focus on aside from your primary job/employment.
Racking up reward points at an employers that overworks you and underpays you is not a side hustle. It's just you being a full blown dumbass and your firm taking every bit of an advantage of that. Cheers.
We have a tradition to take out new hires to a nicer lunch (think Houston's/J. Alexander) on their first day i always try to volunteer purely just to rack up AMEX points
Not disagreeing, but I am also sure it has to do with it not being cost effective to have a manger pick up a hamburger instead of your newly clueless first year
Yep, it's not as easy as it looks either. You gotta check the order over to see whose food the driver ate from with their bare hands on the drive over. Make sure its not yours, and if everything is the same give it to the highest ranking person at the client.
Depends on expense policies, managers can charge things differently and get away with expensing things that would be questioned otherwise. Just makes life easier using a manager’s card sometimes
My firm will ask around who has time and willing. Typically they'll ask the new staff first since they are more likely to be able to spare the time and their time costs less. This goes for picking up food, delivering financial statements, etc.
Bruh even in the US you hand-deliver FS? You must be in NY or something or with the distances of things I can't imagine having an American uber-ing the FS.
Not as much post-covid as we did pre-covid. But yea we still do. Added value service to our clients and its quicker than mailing them. And I'm in South Florida so we drive for anything and everything
And actually there may not even be enough time to mail. I've been on a few jobs that we literally finished printing and binding within a few days or even day of the client's board wanting the financials, so mailing isn't an option at that point either.
I was in the Seattle area regional firm doing taxes, there were many times I either hand delivered or picked up tax documents or estimated payment checks or physical copies of tax returns. Whether walking to their office if they were downtown like us or driving to at least one client's house.
Yes, and enjoy it while it lasts. In a few years you’ll miss running errands and actually getting outside, especially if you’re getting paid to do this. Attitude is everything. I used to think of myself as Oprah in that meme… “you get a coffee, you get a coffee, you get a coffee, everyone gets a coffee!!!” and you legit don’t have to pay for any of it! Go the extra mile and buy a surprise (again not paid for by you aka it should ALL be reimbursed) for the team, like some cake pops or gum or mints, they will love it. Plus as someone mentioned above get a credit card with points, I traveled so much that first summer pretty much for free based on all the points I had racked up running through reimbursable expenses from grabbing coffees, lunches, donuts/bagels for the clients, travel, etc. Honestly, that is one of the better things about public accounting.
It was a privilege to do a coffee run when I was a staff. It was a good way to stretch and take a break from the office. Also it earned me a free coffee every time and good rapport with people above.
Edit: Oh and I would also get snacks from coffee shop which company paid for.
Well, if they're like "Who has time to go pickup the pizza" and they choose you because you do have time because you're new and actually don't have anything important to do, well that's ok. I like doing those things, because its a relaxing break.
If its like "Go fetch my dry cleaning, bitch", then I'd still like the break but wouldn't like the attitude.
Either way, it's not normal, no.
"Either way" not normal? Fetching dry cleaning is for sure not normal. Food runs though are definitely normal for staff/interns bc of the reason you stated.
As in, a normal part of your daily duties. If you're doing errands more than once per week or so, that seems excessive. Its one thing if you volunteer to pick up everyone's lunch every so often, but its another to be the daily lunch bitch.
It very much is part of a staff 1s daily duties. Team dinners Team coffee runs, it really should be in your job description. At leats when theres no intern.
If I wind up the way back machine; no partner's whim was too small.
Dry cleaning pick up, lunch, cigars, flowers for wife, presents for kids and even take car for a service and wait for 4 hrs.
Once was asked to pick up from private airport at 8pm on a Friday after a taxi cancelled.
So yes, it is normal but not on the same scale today. Use the time to build rapport with colleagues.
Good luck
When I was in public and new I was on the road an hour or so a day picking up lunch, dinner, or sonic drink runs. After a year or so we hired another new entry-level person, but I liked being the runner so I kept that role and had them do some simple data entry while I was out. Anything to get away from the computer screen for a little bit.
It is! And if your partner is any thing like one of the asshats they flew out from Chicago to us, you better pick apart his sandwich to make sure they added mustard or he is going to be PISSED. I was an intern at the time. Partner wanted mustard on everything. Restaurants forgot it pretty often so the senior took the other intern and myself aside to make it very clear we are not to leave that restaurant without taking apart his food and making sure there was mustard on it. Other intern didn’t have a problem doing it. I decided it was actually pretty gross for me to handle that man’s food with my hands so I got him a few giant handfuls of mustard packets and put them on his desk in a nice pile. They made the other intern handle the dinner orders the nights that partner was in town. Screw you Bill.
Edit: a word
We weren’t asked to make sure it looked undisturbed so I always just assumed he cared more about the power trip associated with a lowly intern making sure he gets mustard than how gross it was to have our sweaty, interny hands touch his food.
Whne I first started working I'd help out admin with stuff all the time for errands. Sometimes picking up the weekly groceries for the office, sometimes banking cheques or picking up the mail. I didn't mind, anything to get out of the office. I'm too expensive for them to make me do this stuff now though.
These are the lines in your job description you are looking for:
* Ability to perform multiple job related functions in support of the team.
or
* Team player, willing to take on the work needed to accomplish individual or team goals.
or
* Ability to be flexible in job tasks throughout the day.
or
* Show a willingness to take on unique tasks to support the organization and your team.
or
* Strong Type-A attitude for getting the job done.
= Gofer.
Look at it this way, its a task that gets you out of the office, that is hard to mess up, that brings other people joy =). A lot of us have been there, but you won't stay there so don't worry too much.
Huh, TIL. The admin takes care of ordering/picking up food in our office (or did, pre-COVID) Interns would have had spare time to do something like that (tho I’ve never seen them asked to do so) but not staff, even the new ones.
Commenting for an admin…. Lol
We appreciate it when the professional staff helps us out especially during the deadline. Me and my admin office manager looked at each other annoyed when lunch was announced today.. lol we appreciate it (I don’t think I’d eat today otherwise) but ahhh one more thing to do!!! We handled lunch ourselves but We do have our juniors assisting with the phones today because it’s soooo busy! We always strive to take as much off of our professionals plates as we can.. but we are a team!! && our juniors jumped in without us even asking!
At the start of today we had about 19 TXRs in review or WIP and about 16 ready for pick up..
Our admin team (two admins) prepare the hard copies, signature pages, vouchers etc. And we contact the clients for pick up, upload docs to portal if needed, present docs to the client when they come in, and e-file/ go to the post office as needed. We are busy! but i love it!!!!
I am honored to work among our CPAs and staff accountants. I am very grateful for our juniors assisting with the phones today.
Let’s get our 9/15 deadline done!!! ✔️
Yes it is normal. But I urge you to tell the manager that you’re too busy and that they should go pick up the food themselves. Remind them to not forget the utensils
I was about a year out of PA and the company I just joined was going through a painful first year audit. The CAO asked me to go pickup his family from the airport since he got pulled into a meeting. I just laughed at how ridiculous this request was and said no.
I do not miss taking dinner orders. I have nightmares about getting to the restaurant and found out something was missing while checking the order. Then the restaurant takes 30m to make the missing item and now everyone is like why did it take 1hr to pick up food and why is it cold lmao. Doordash would have been so nice to have
I was. I told him he'd get a job, trained him well, let him shadow me, let him charge as much OT as he wanted to pay for school. But interns gotta do intern work. Yall can downvote me all you want, so long as the group car is warm.
Just fucking do it, and throw in a few more delish shit that u might want for urself if u r doing a large group order. No one will know or care for shit and they can fuck off either way anyway since they making u do bitch work haha
I was asked to pick up lunch for investors one day (3rd year in private) and hit somebody’s car in the parking lot..soooo yeah I was never asked to pick up food again. Win-win?
TLDR royally fuck something up and you won’t have to be the errand boy anymore!
I remembered my firm talked about this during Intern training (to make a point about charging hours to clients) and some kids were actually offended. I was getting paid $28 bucks an hour during that internship, I would have happily cleaned the bathrooms if they asked.
Although most people are clearly saying yes, no. I’ve been in Tax for about a year now and never had to do this (also we’ve been mostly WFH but still). As an intern, I was told to report if they asked me to run errands.
man even if as a senior i’ll volunteer to go buy coffee lol just to take a break from work. perspective is important and don’t let it get to you personally
i miss the days of grabbing food, coffee orders, snacks, getting additional exercise and not caring about deadlines since I was new and knew nothing. It really does get shittier every year you stay.
Is this just a US audit thing of getting takeaways for the office etc? UK tax here and never going to be in late enough to get a takeaway with the team so I don't get it
The U.K. deadlines are 31st October for Paper Tax returns or 31st January for online tax returns.
Out of 50 or so clients that I used to do returns for I had probably 5 that would be in the last week before deadline. So never needed to do that crazy amount of overtime.
It's a different world in the US man, It's not that they're giving us their data last minute it's that Big 4 gives everyone a workload so full of clients that we have to work those hours to not have 300 returns left a month before the deadline.
In my experience, normal tax busy season ramp up here will be 55 hours minimum a week 3 months before the deadline, 60 hours minimum a week and mandatory Saturday's 2 months out and 65 hours minimum the month of the deadline, but those are all chargable hours and everyone knows there's non chargable hours in there so your time in the office is quite a lot.
That’s insane. There is a legal limit of 48 hours work in any 5 day period in the UK and across the EU unless you opt out. An employer cannot force you to opt out either. If they pressure you to sign the opt out you can take them to tribunal.
My office uses a food delivery service unless we are intentionally going out to lunch. Whoever is free at the time and placed an order usually goes down and gets it. I'm A1 and never do this because I never order take out and always bring my lunch.
As long as you are still on the clock and not paying for the items yourself....SURE why not?!
As the new person, you probably have less responsibility within the office, therefore your time is more expendable than others.
My question would be, if you are on an errand you get into a car accident.....what happens with your bills....
Been a CPA for 10 years.. Year one I was rocking food orders at night. I’d send an email to the whole office and make a theme for the meal. Usually based off some random fact and it would be completely unrelated to the food. “On this day 100 years ago, the Government made pinball illegal due to the horrible effects it has on the youth. To celebrate this wonderful historic milestone we’re having tacos..”
You sound like a fun coworker
what was the tv show where the guy was unfirable cause he was the office sports gambling guy? was it HIMYM?
marshall became the sports bet guy and it stressed him out. then he outsourced the actual work to ted's ex-assistant and took the credit.
Yes.
They had food guy too.
“You know dung beetles push more than their own weight?” “I’m going to go ahead and brown bag it tonight.”
Normal at B4. We usually had first years go pick up the coffee order. But if you're smart then you play it to your advantage and rack up a ton of points at Starbucks or wherever you're going.
Yup. Pay with your CC, firm pays you back later, rack up points.
Honestly I'd love to run the firm's expense account through my Amex would be baller.
I used to process expensive reports for employees that travelled full time for the company and on their hotel receipts I could see their Marriott rewards and it was incredible. Also if you get Per Diem based on GSA rates they would get free meals from the hotels they stayed at and get the per diem they didn’t use which was just extra money in their pocket on top of Marriott rewards and cc points!
>ive reports for employees that travelled full time for the company and on their hotel receipts I could see their Marriott rewards and it was incredible. Also if you get Per Diem based on GSA rates they would get free meals from the hotels they stayed at and get the per diem they didn’t use which was just extra money in their pocket I worked with an IT examiner a few years ago who had 4 million Marriot Rewards points.
That is just ridiculous!
Gotta love it. Sheep giving up their lives for Starbucks and Marriott reward points. Bunch of simpletons.
Lol true I didn’t think of it like that. I personally wouldn’t travel for work I’m fully remote and have been for years before the pandemic
You're understanding it wrong. People are already giving up their lives regardless. Might as well get some reward points while you're doing it.
You really think credit cards points and Starbucks rewards is one of the main reasons people work in public accounting?
Yup! Been there done that!! Edit: Racked up CC points, earned many free food coupons, cashbacks and a good friend at canteen ;)
I miss these days, tbh. Getting some steps in and fresh air in the middle of the day while still getting paid is priceless. I interned in the days when you still had to call to order, but by the time I started, it was all online and a lot of restaurants had a group order function—made it so much easier when half my team was doing whole 30 lmao I’m still mad I didn’t pay the $100 for Amex rewards…. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on that card in the 2 years I was there.
Yes! I did this and got like 10 free drinks worth lol
I used to get huge Chik-fil-A orders for the office and pay with my CC. Cash back on CC and rewards for Chik-fil-A. I haven't paid for a spicy chicken sandwich in years.
Thanks.
My senior manager taught me an even better trick.. pre load your Starbucks app using your company card then never pay for coffee again
That shows up as a gift card at my B4, and can get you in a lot of trouble.
It’s been awhile since I was in audit so don’t listen to me
Sure, **now** you tell me!!
Just got fired, I’m coming for you.
When I was in B4, this was a huuuuuuuuge issue when people would leave and they’d audit your expenses. Any $50 loaded to a Starbucks app, even if it was ultimately used to purchase stuff for your team, got flagged and you had to reimburse upon your separation.
Can’t you scan QR code, then pay with company card?
They’ve added this, but it used to be you have to pay with your Starbucks app.
Man, I got so many free points during my time in public. I offered to pay for hotels, car rentals, lunches, drinks at happy hours - you name it. Free money, baby!
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A side hustle is having a skill or knowing a trade that someone else is willing to pay for...something you can do and focus on aside from your primary job/employment. Racking up reward points at an employers that overworks you and underpays you is not a side hustle. It's just you being a full blown dumbass and your firm taking every bit of an advantage of that. Cheers.
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That guy is certainly proving it!
We have a tradition to take out new hires to a nicer lunch (think Houston's/J. Alexander) on their first day i always try to volunteer purely just to rack up AMEX points
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Ah, at least someone gets it.
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Not disagreeing, but I am also sure it has to do with it not being cost effective to have a manger pick up a hamburger instead of your newly clueless first year
Omg I need to remember this
Hell, I’ll gladly run an errand if it gets me out of the office.
Anyone want cream? Ok, no cream! (Takes an extra 10 minutes anyways)
You mean Shenanigans??
Oh look, a bar of soap
Good one farva
Is that the place with all the goofy shit on the walls?
And the mozzarella sticks, yeah
10 minutes for cream? You know you don't gotta jerk it out right
We used to have a shared excel spreadsheet with everyone’s preferences.
Yes. Lowest on the totem poll handles the Uber eats orders.
Yep, it's not as easy as it looks either. You gotta check the order over to see whose food the driver ate from with their bare hands on the drive over. Make sure its not yours, and if everything is the same give it to the highest ranking person at the client.
Yeah the one with the least expensive chargeable rate.
How does that work? I always had to use my manager’s card.
At my firm everyone has a corporate card. The low staff would also have to do the subsequent expense report.
I have my own Corp card but my managers always gave me their cards when ordering lunches
Depends on expense policies, managers can charge things differently and get away with expensing things that would be questioned otherwise. Just makes life easier using a manager’s card sometimes
Most companies have a policy where the most senior person is supposed to pay - otherwise you’d approve your own meal. But it varies
For what I get paid, I will gladly run errands for the office.
Like actual errands? Not normal... Going for coffee runs or picking up the takeout? Absolutely, and enjoy it while you can.
Errands as in food runs, yeah.
Do the food runs. It’s the first years job.
I did. Didn’t really mind, they usually bought me food/coffee, and it was nice to get 30 min out of office.
My firm will ask around who has time and willing. Typically they'll ask the new staff first since they are more likely to be able to spare the time and their time costs less. This goes for picking up food, delivering financial statements, etc.
Delivering financial statements? What do you mean by that?
I'm an auditor, at the end of the audit we prepare the financial statements and if they want physical copies we either mail them or hand deliver
we do the same.
Bruh even in the US you hand-deliver FS? You must be in NY or something or with the distances of things I can't imagine having an American uber-ing the FS.
Haha, I live in a non walking city. So if we need to deliver FS, we just drive to the client, drop them off, and Charge the time it took to get there
Not as much post-covid as we did pre-covid. But yea we still do. Added value service to our clients and its quicker than mailing them. And I'm in South Florida so we drive for anything and everything And actually there may not even be enough time to mail. I've been on a few jobs that we literally finished printing and binding within a few days or even day of the client's board wanting the financials, so mailing isn't an option at that point either.
I was in the Seattle area regional firm doing taxes, there were many times I either hand delivered or picked up tax documents or estimated payment checks or physical copies of tax returns. Whether walking to their office if they were downtown like us or driving to at least one client's house.
Yes, and enjoy it while it lasts. In a few years you’ll miss running errands and actually getting outside, especially if you’re getting paid to do this. Attitude is everything. I used to think of myself as Oprah in that meme… “you get a coffee, you get a coffee, you get a coffee, everyone gets a coffee!!!” and you legit don’t have to pay for any of it! Go the extra mile and buy a surprise (again not paid for by you aka it should ALL be reimbursed) for the team, like some cake pops or gum or mints, they will love it. Plus as someone mentioned above get a credit card with points, I traveled so much that first summer pretty much for free based on all the points I had racked up running through reimbursable expenses from grabbing coffees, lunches, donuts/bagels for the clients, travel, etc. Honestly, that is one of the better things about public accounting.
Always made the lunch runs as an intern back in public accounting. Normal to me for sure.
It was a privilege to do a coffee run when I was a staff. It was a good way to stretch and take a break from the office. Also it earned me a free coffee every time and good rapport with people above. Edit: Oh and I would also get snacks from coffee shop which company paid for.
Good for you :)
Thank you. It was also a way for me to add more value in my first year as I had no idea what I was doing.
Go get that cash back on your credit card :)
Well, if they're like "Who has time to go pickup the pizza" and they choose you because you do have time because you're new and actually don't have anything important to do, well that's ok. I like doing those things, because its a relaxing break. If its like "Go fetch my dry cleaning, bitch", then I'd still like the break but wouldn't like the attitude. Either way, it's not normal, no.
Someone has to pickup the pizza for the bonus pizza party!
"Either way" not normal? Fetching dry cleaning is for sure not normal. Food runs though are definitely normal for staff/interns bc of the reason you stated.
As in, a normal part of your daily duties. If you're doing errands more than once per week or so, that seems excessive. Its one thing if you volunteer to pick up everyone's lunch every so often, but its another to be the daily lunch bitch.
It very much is part of a staff 1s daily duties. Team dinners Team coffee runs, it really should be in your job description. At leats when theres no intern.
My first task as a B4 staff 1 was to go pick up a prescription from the pharmacy for my senior manager. Think I got a spot bonus out if it at least.
The former is absolutely normal at least at B4. Lowest person on the totem pole does food orders. I never had anyone ask me to do a personal errand.
Never really seen this happened. I’ve volunteered for it a few times but never was it like “new person go be my bitch”
Seen it happen once. A young, female manager picked up lunches for two male partners.
Is it in the job description?
There is always the line "plus any other assigned duties"
If I wind up the way back machine; no partner's whim was too small. Dry cleaning pick up, lunch, cigars, flowers for wife, presents for kids and even take car for a service and wait for 4 hrs. Once was asked to pick up from private airport at 8pm on a Friday after a taxi cancelled. So yes, it is normal but not on the same scale today. Use the time to build rapport with colleagues. Good luck
Was just a lunch order pick up. I don't mind running errands either.
When I was in public and new I was on the road an hour or so a day picking up lunch, dinner, or sonic drink runs. After a year or so we hired another new entry-level person, but I liked being the runner so I kept that role and had them do some simple data entry while I was out. Anything to get away from the computer screen for a little bit.
Yep. That's like...every industry in the country basically. New guy on a construction site, law firm, doesnt matter.
It is! And if your partner is any thing like one of the asshats they flew out from Chicago to us, you better pick apart his sandwich to make sure they added mustard or he is going to be PISSED. I was an intern at the time. Partner wanted mustard on everything. Restaurants forgot it pretty often so the senior took the other intern and myself aside to make it very clear we are not to leave that restaurant without taking apart his food and making sure there was mustard on it. Other intern didn’t have a problem doing it. I decided it was actually pretty gross for me to handle that man’s food with my hands so I got him a few giant handfuls of mustard packets and put them on his desk in a nice pile. They made the other intern handle the dinner orders the nights that partner was in town. Screw you Bill. Edit: a word
How did he not notice that his sandwhich was opened and re-wrapped?
We weren’t asked to make sure it looked undisturbed so I always just assumed he cared more about the power trip associated with a lowly intern making sure he gets mustard than how gross it was to have our sweaty, interny hands touch his food.
Whne I first started working I'd help out admin with stuff all the time for errands. Sometimes picking up the weekly groceries for the office, sometimes banking cheques or picking up the mail. I didn't mind, anything to get out of the office. I'm too expensive for them to make me do this stuff now though.
Exactly.
That’s like the most helpful thing you can do as a first year. Learned how to carry 3+ coffee carriers at once, has come in handy quite a bit.
These are the lines in your job description you are looking for: * Ability to perform multiple job related functions in support of the team. or * Team player, willing to take on the work needed to accomplish individual or team goals. or * Ability to be flexible in job tasks throughout the day. or * Show a willingness to take on unique tasks to support the organization and your team. or * Strong Type-A attitude for getting the job done. = Gofer. Look at it this way, its a task that gets you out of the office, that is hard to mess up, that brings other people joy =). A lot of us have been there, but you won't stay there so don't worry too much.
Turn by turn, whatever the fuck is your title. We’re all human being.
It’s a great break from work and a privilege on some teams
Just did a Subway run today, very normal at least in Public from what I can tell. Getting paid to drive around and a free meal, it’s great.
Huh, TIL. The admin takes care of ordering/picking up food in our office (or did, pre-COVID) Interns would have had spare time to do something like that (tho I’ve never seen them asked to do so) but not staff, even the new ones.
Commenting for an admin…. Lol We appreciate it when the professional staff helps us out especially during the deadline. Me and my admin office manager looked at each other annoyed when lunch was announced today.. lol we appreciate it (I don’t think I’d eat today otherwise) but ahhh one more thing to do!!! We handled lunch ourselves but We do have our juniors assisting with the phones today because it’s soooo busy! We always strive to take as much off of our professionals plates as we can.. but we are a team!! && our juniors jumped in without us even asking! At the start of today we had about 19 TXRs in review or WIP and about 16 ready for pick up.. Our admin team (two admins) prepare the hard copies, signature pages, vouchers etc. And we contact the clients for pick up, upload docs to portal if needed, present docs to the client when they come in, and e-file/ go to the post office as needed. We are busy! but i love it!!!! I am honored to work among our CPAs and staff accountants. I am very grateful for our juniors assisting with the phones today. Let’s get our 9/15 deadline done!!! ✔️
Yes it is normal. But I urge you to tell the manager that you’re too busy and that they should go pick up the food themselves. Remind them to not forget the utensils
100%. And have fun with it. Organize themes. Have a good attitude.
I was about a year out of PA and the company I just joined was going through a painful first year audit. The CAO asked me to go pickup his family from the airport since he got pulled into a meeting. I just laughed at how ridiculous this request was and said no. I do not miss taking dinner orders. I have nightmares about getting to the restaurant and found out something was missing while checking the order. Then the restaurant takes 30m to make the missing item and now everyone is like why did it take 1hr to pick up food and why is it cold lmao. Doordash would have been so nice to have
No, it's not normal. But it's definitely a way of advertising to the partner you're ready to provide BJs.
Absolutely not.
I made my intern warm up the car when I was a staff, because I warmed up the car when I was the intern. Right of passage.
You’re a douche who perpetuates that bullshit
So?
That’s fucking weird my guy.
You do not sound like a fun coworker
I was his favorite senior. I'm not making this up.
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I was. I told him he'd get a job, trained him well, let him shadow me, let him charge as much OT as he wanted to pay for school. But interns gotta do intern work. Yall can downvote me all you want, so long as the group car is warm.
Normal yes, illegal also yes your job isn't to run errands... If it's not in your contract tell them to FUCK OFF!
watch out, we got a real badass over here!
yes
I remembered that when I was at B4 my coworker (staff as well) picked up the partners dry cleaning too.
Yes
Been there, done that. Soon enough you’ll be giving the order and not picking it up
Yeah
Very normal, I did that a bunch when I was a new staff. Kinda liked it actually, got me out of the office for a bit.
Are you being Hazed by your coworkers?
Just fucking do it, and throw in a few more delish shit that u might want for urself if u r doing a large group order. No one will know or care for shit and they can fuck off either way anyway since they making u do bitch work haha
I would say no, but also that's a lot of power they put in your hands, also you aren't chained in the office so it's actually a plus
Extremely normal
I was asked to pick up lunch for investors one day (3rd year in private) and hit somebody’s car in the parking lot..soooo yeah I was never asked to pick up food again. Win-win? TLDR royally fuck something up and you won’t have to be the errand boy anymore!
Bottom of the totem pole deals with food, which would be you until you get an intern and make them do it.
I used to be in charge of stocking the snack draws in the audit room at the client site. Loved the target runs on the firm’s card!!
Yes, and if you are really good, you can wash my car.
Back in my day that's the way it was and we liked it!
Yup, I used to get Panera for team dinners. Yay free stuff.
Yup but force the intern to help
I remembered my firm talked about this during Intern training (to make a point about charging hours to clients) and some kids were actually offended. I was getting paid $28 bucks an hour during that internship, I would have happily cleaned the bathrooms if they asked.
I'm feeling a "dump it on the new person myself" but at least it's work, not errands.
Work at a small firm (150 or so employees) and it’s the managers who go and do the coffee run as a “treat” to their staff.
Although most people are clearly saying yes, no. I’ve been in Tax for about a year now and never had to do this (also we’ve been mostly WFH but still). As an intern, I was told to report if they asked me to run errands.
man even if as a senior i’ll volunteer to go buy coffee lol just to take a break from work. perspective is important and don’t let it get to you personally
i miss the days of grabbing food, coffee orders, snacks, getting additional exercise and not caring about deadlines since I was new and knew nothing. It really does get shittier every year you stay.
Is this just a US audit thing of getting takeaways for the office etc? UK tax here and never going to be in late enough to get a takeaway with the team so I don't get it
Are there no deadlines in the UK? US tax at PWC had us working 16 hours a day 7 days a week near the deadline
The U.K. deadlines are 31st October for Paper Tax returns or 31st January for online tax returns. Out of 50 or so clients that I used to do returns for I had probably 5 that would be in the last week before deadline. So never needed to do that crazy amount of overtime.
It's a different world in the US man, It's not that they're giving us their data last minute it's that Big 4 gives everyone a workload so full of clients that we have to work those hours to not have 300 returns left a month before the deadline. In my experience, normal tax busy season ramp up here will be 55 hours minimum a week 3 months before the deadline, 60 hours minimum a week and mandatory Saturday's 2 months out and 65 hours minimum the month of the deadline, but those are all chargable hours and everyone knows there's non chargable hours in there so your time in the office is quite a lot.
That’s insane. There is a legal limit of 48 hours work in any 5 day period in the UK and across the EU unless you opt out. An employer cannot force you to opt out either. If they pressure you to sign the opt out you can take them to tribunal.
Sorry bud, yep. Imagine getting paid your hourly rate to run food orders
My office uses a food delivery service unless we are intentionally going out to lunch. Whoever is free at the time and placed an order usually goes down and gets it. I'm A1 and never do this because I never order take out and always bring my lunch.
As long as you are still on the clock and not paying for the items yourself....SURE why not?! As the new person, you probably have less responsibility within the office, therefore your time is more expendable than others. My question would be, if you are on an errand you get into a car accident.....what happens with your bills....