I need an assistant

I've always wanted to blog about my officemates, but I'm afraid that what I'm about to reveal will backfire on me. Yeah because I'm a coward like that. But recent events made me realised how much I miss my ex-officemates.

If you're working/have worked in an audit firm, you will understand what I'm about to say.

Audit firms have tons and tons juniors and trainees, so when you are upgraded to SIC, you will have assistants made up of audit juniors who are more junior than you and trainees. During my first few files as SIC, I was given an array of fresh juniors and trainees who knew next to nothing about audit. Needless to say, I only knew about 0.05% more about audit than them. So you can imagine how disastrous my first files were (I think there were about 3,4 files-the 2 first weeks as SIC, I had to do 3 files).

After that, I started to get the hang of it. My files were still a disaster, and I kept on doing the careless mistakes.  My excel formulas were wrong, I didn't sum until the end, I didn't change the year, etc, etc, and the manager (I have always worked with this one manager, until I was upgraded to much complicated files) always reminded me in his emails to review my files more than twice before handing in to be reviewed, which was impossible for me, because I didn't even have enough time to review my work once, let alone more than twice.

This happened until one day, this one guy came to be my assistant. He was a junior, but he got passed around too much (God that sounds so wrong) that he didn't know much about each of the sections, even the easiest ones. When I talked to the other SICs about him, they told me that he was a bit slow so they didn't want him in their audit teams. Memang kejam sikit, but you need to know that we were given limited amount of time to complete a file so we didn't need the extra baggage. We just didn't have the time to actually teach the juniors how to do their jobs, especially during the peak period.

So I was stuck with this audit junior guy, who didn't know much about audit, even after 2 months of working. So I gave him the Cash and Bank section (which is the easiest section in audit), and it took him more than a week to complete everything even though the company only had about 4 bank accounts and 2 petty cash accounts. I still remember this because he only sent 2 bank confirmations when he was supposed to send out 8, 2 for each bank. I concede that I'm not a very patient person, so I asked him directly lah what was his problem.

And this was his answer. Apparently, he got annoyed that my audit working paper (I gave him a template that I devised on my own and all he had to do was enter the company's info, that's all). To him, my workdone was messy and my font choice bothered him. So he did his work in his own font choice and his own procedure and after a while, he forgot what my template looked like. Looking for my template was what took him so long to finish his work.

Nak marah pun ada, nak tergelak pun ada. But his answer explained his peculiar habit. Dunno how to put this into words, but he cannot abide the sound of his glass/mug hitting the table twice, because to him, it should only hit the table once. Do you understand what I'm saying? So if the glass hit the table twice, he would pick the glass up and put it on the table until he would only hear one *click*. One time, it took him more than 15 minutes to do this (I timed him) that I couldn't stand it anymore. I bought a few hankies for him and told him to put that under his glass so he wouldn't hear the sound of the glass hitting the table twice ever again. The trick worked sometimes, but most of the time it didn't.

Poor guy is suffering from OCD. And that explained why he took so long to finish one audit procedure, mine had lots of straight lines and coloured boxes.

So I was in a dilemma. Giving him more responsibilities would spell trouble for me because my file would be completed later than scheduled, but none of the SICs wanted to swap assistants with me because they didn't want him anywhere near their files so I was worried about him. So I persuaded the manager to let him follow me for the next file and to give me another assistant, a fresh junior or a trainee wouldn't matter as long as I had another assistant. After a lengthy battle and a few threats, I got my way.

At first I didn't know what to do with the OCD guy. In the first few days, I asked him to download a few movies and songs for me, and then happened an event that would change my opinion on him forever. I was running out of time to finish a file, and I just didn't have enough time to review my skeleton-looking work (no coloured boxes, no lines, no Calibri size 10, no everything)  so I asked him to do the review for me. And he was actually very good at that. He discovered that I did my usual mistakes (wrong excel formulas, sum wrongly, etc,etc) and he rectified those all by himself. Apparently he didn't get disturbed as much if it was only black and white. After that, I would do all the audit procedures either all by myself or with the help of another assistant/s and he would review everything for me and rectify the things he could on his own. Our weaknesses complimented each other's weaknesses and it worked.

He stayed with me until my last file and I truly miss him. He didn't only help me in the work parameter. He would pick up the phone for me, reply the BBMs and SMSes and whatsapps for me, even buy concert tickets for me. He would do everything, as long as I let him stay in his comfort zone.

The ultimate assistant.

I didn't know how much I miss him until I had to pick up my own phone and compose my own emails :(

A truly long post. Skip this if you have zero patience.