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

By William Brighenti
2/25/2010 (edited)

I'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 intermediate accounting in college and then switched their major to marketing, a much less challenging discipline. I suspect that they are the main culprits spreading this libelous fiction on Twitter (and, by implication, that CPAs are nerds, but that is an entirely different libelous fiction, for which we in class action intend to sue).

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. Studies assert that CPAs love accounting because of the presence of a gene that non-CPAs lack. They based their findings on a series of tests of 100 CPAs, who both sweated and salivated while debiting and crediting. 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 "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. As we all know, Freud himself was a very confused, sad, miserable human being, which explains why he was such an excellent accountant.

Initially I believed that Pleasure Principle theory accounted for my love life in college. Women I dated in college lapsed into comas, never to be heard from again. Frankly, I found that behavior strange, if not downright rude. That 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 on a date at the drive-in, 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 but rather our genetic code. I reached the conclusion that either you've got the good genes or you don't. 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 will always find accounting and accountants boring.

As CPAs, we have the good genes.

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.