A Counting School - Hardcore Chartered Accountancy

KPMG overtime lawsuit settlement letters go out; unrelated adrenalin rush occurs

You no doubt already heard about the big KPMG overtime lawsuit . But if you haven't, and you used to work for KPMG in Canada in the past few years, then you do now! That's because you recently received a letter disclosing what your share of the settlement is going to be. If you were an administrative staff person supposed to work 40 hours a week, no more, no less, the letter will indicate some dollar figure, your share of the almost $10 million settlement . Intriguingly, you'll get that letter even if you weren't an administrative person - that is, a young CA student or similar 'overtime exempt' professional employee. And what will the letter will tell you? It will say that your share of the settlement is zero dollars. Wow. Thanks for your service, this doesn't apply to you, have a nice day. I wavered between thinking "well, that makes sense", and "that's completely insane, why would you rub salt in the wounds of someone who presumably left...

Clueless woman blocks street, disrupts 504 streetcars, infuriates me

Toronto is besieged by waves of idiots. People are driving their cars into the city and parking them on the snowy streets, blissfully unaware that their car is up to a METRE away from the curb, and therefore jutting out into the path of passing streetcars. Every single trip I took this week was delayed as TTC operators carefully edged their streetcars past parked cars. And tonight their luck ran out on Roncesvalles: 504 streetcar service was disrupted for an hour due to, as you can see above, the careless Jaguar driver's horrible parking job. Sometimes a car is carelessly parked by someone running inside a store to retrieve their wallet or other lost item. Fine. It happens to everyone - emergencies happen. This was not one of those situations. The car's owner disappeared, and was nowhere to be found. The delay stretched on interminably - three streetcars ended up getting backed up. Most people living nearby disembarked and walked home. Others had longer trips home and couldn't...

Earlier today I thought, "gee, I wonder if my firm has an Iraq office"

From the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot file, comes this story courtesy of Francine - Deloitte is operating in Iraq. The article that mentions Deloitte is about a Marine facing court martial - appealing a conviction actually. It breathlessly discusses all the operations Deloitte is involved in. And it's certainly too weird to believe, but I'll assume the Salem News has its facts right. What would one of the Big Four be doing in Iraq? Auditing the American contractors? Apparently yes - and doing some consulting work too, according to the article. I sped through the article, but the jarring thing that appears in the whole piece is the series of revelations from a former Marine, a friend of the embattled Marine, who discusses Deloitte and makes what I can only describe as really far-out claims. The Marine is part of a group that's investing D&T's operations in Iraq. The article shows that they're alleging a link between the military judicial system and D&T. They believe...

Not really paying attention

I was amazed by how quickly this day blew by. Having shown up thinking that I would have very little to do, I found myself continually bouncing from one file to another, tying up various loose ends. During the course of my hectic little rush I found myself glancing at the little news feed on the elevator screens. New CD coming out, more cloudy weather, something about a shooting. Nothing really clicked. That changed, of course, when I pulled my head out of the tax files and finally interacted with people immersed in weighter matters. It seems that I wasn't the only one who was caught unaware until so late in the day. The IHT wrote about one young student's oblivious stroll: "Bernhards recalled walking toward her class, preoccupied with an upcoming exam and listening to music on her iPod. On the way, she said, she heard loud cracks, and only later concluded that they had been gunshots from the second round of shootings. But even at that point, many students were walking around the campus...

Barbara Bush is a Filthy Rich Racist Harpy

I'm watching Spike Lee's Very Important and epic 4-hour documentary When the Levees Broke . In addition to reminding me of many things which went Horribly Wrong in the summer of 2005, the movie plays Barbara Bush's crass and insensitive remark about the victims of Hurricane Katrina being in a position to benefit from the hurricane. Although receiving aid is nice and all, the way she said those words - and the unfeeling boorish sentiment it exposes showcases her to the world as a disgusting harpy. And, the mother of the current U.S. president too. I was curious to see the results of a Google search for the pointed headline I chose for this comment. It turns out this isn't a unique sentiment in the least -unsurprisingly, really. Her exact words - thanks Japan Today - were: "and so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them," Spike Lee's movie is even-handed enough to point out that there are both elements of not...