**YOU’VE BEEN WARNED** These con artists are nice as pie in the interview. That all changes on Day 1. Luckily, I came to ZOLL LifeVest’s Accounting/Controlling department with experience from both Public Accounting and Industry, and I can tell you that what goes on at ZOLL Accounting/Finance is NOT NORMAL... in the worst ways possible. Some positions are a revolving door. WORKLOAD is a crapshoot - you may notice other employees can go home at 4pm day after day like clockwork while even weekend warrior duty for you won’t meet your deadlines. Each job is different here - you might get lucky, but why play Russian roulette? SYSTEMS: For an Accountant in industry, the ERP system and associated tools should be your lifeline. Well, think again because LifeVest uses a different ERP while parent company in Chelmsford at least has a real system in Oracle. LifeVest’s ERP leaves much to be desired. After using real ERP systems at previous jobs, believe me you DO NOT WANT TO USE their ERP. Want to pull basic info like Purchase Orders or Item Costs? You’re going to need to ask IT to get involved, making you, the Accountant, as helpless as a baby duck in the Mojave desert. Don’t worry, the ERP isn’t your only technical nightmare - the company has other tools like Power BI, which are highly encouraged by your management, however the company doesn’t have the necessary versions of Microsoft Office and Excel Add-In’s to support large data sets. Big Data is overrated anyway, try using Small Data instead! COLLABORATION: You will be pressured to collaborate with other departments, rightly so, however your middle and upper management will simultaneously FREAK OUT by calling you BAD ACCOUNTANT if you ask questions to other departments, even IT, leaving you in no-man’s land once again. That’s okay though because I think Accounting Management’s PARANOIA here of being exposed to other departments at least shows that they somewhat realize they are up a creek without a paddle. MICROMANAGING is an understatement here. Expect to have everything short of a trip to the bathroom PRINTED out for your boss to review. YES! i said printed out. For you Accountants, you’ll spend more time in Page Layout adjusting your Print Margins and making sure your Headers and Footers are labeled correctly than you will actually doing any real work! REVIEW: When your boss reviews your work (anything you do will be reviewed. ANYTHING), expect to see an alphabetized list of corrections as the pages have been physically marked up and labeled with outdated ACRONYMS that have not been used in a business setting for decades. Once you have meandered through this long list of illegible markings, you can submit your work for review again, and if approved, your boss will hand you back the paperwork while walking past your desk in complete silence. This is a good thing. Keep in mind, do not take all of this personally, this is just your boss's way of checking your work to make sure that Excel performed that SUM function correctly. The good (and bad) thing is that for all of the reviewing that your boss does, it never really advances past the stage of checking for simple mathematical errors. Don't expect any input from middle/upper management on if what you are doing is the RIGHT way to do it. You just have to do it, and do it this way, because it's always been done this way. You're not another BAD ACCOUNTANT, are you? (You'll hear this many times, apparently this organization has gone through a long list of bad accountants in recent years - go figure?). If you are at all conscious of the environment, you might want to look away, because you’re going to kill a lot of trees. Expect a dumpster bin of paper printouts every few months. Personally I try to make the best of it by using the paper to start bonfires. But I digress, on to...SCANNING, after the paper copy has been reviewed, you must SCAN everything to PDF. Take a moment to reflect on the fact that your Excel workbook has been PRINTED, then reviewed, then SCANNED back into electronic, albeit PDF, format. If you appreciate efficiency or just hate wasting your time and energy, you’re going to need to waste just a little more paper in the form of a barf bag. I am convinced that no single human has spent this much time in front of a printer since Johannes Gutenberg. IMPROVEMENTS: You will be encouraged to improve things but you are also NOT allowed to change anything. The same exact reports need created each month in the same exact way. You will not even be able to rely on basic math. Simple calculations like weighted averages are expected to be manipulated for upper management. You cannot change. Anything. NEW WAYS of thinking (post 1980’s era) are viewed with extreme skepticism. Do you like to use Pivot Tables? Well you are not allowed to use pivot tables. You can try to use them but don’t let management know you’ve used them, they will become paranoid that you are planning a coup attempt and you will be back to printing out Subtotal functions for your boss to review in no time! OVERALL I would say there are some good people sprinkled throughout the organization but the tone firmly set by middle and upper management in Accounting/Controlling, along with laughable technical tools like the ERP and a shoddy BI, has really screwed the pooch on this one. BEWARE - Better hope you like blue goo explosions and electro shocks because you’re likely to be the next poor soul fitted for a Zoll LifeVest if you work in Accounting/Controlling here. You’re gonna need one. Quite honestly a one way trip to the nearest mental hospital would be the better approach - you’re going to need therapists too - a lot of them. By the way, good luck getting that vest or those therapy sessions covered by your insurance - I’ve seen multiple employees terminated while putting in their two week notices (that was probably cool before the internet I guess?) Shout out 1980’s era business practices yet again. Shout out to HR for allowing that to happen. PLEASE be careful in planning your exit especially if you or your family need HEALTH INSURANCE. Once you inform management of your intentions to resign, you will need to sign up for COBRA immediately. If you question why you cannot work out your two-week notice, your boss will tell you with a straight face it’s due to lack of resources - pity. The speed at which your boss hands you the paperwork to sign up for COBRA suggests this isn’t their first rodeo. You will be shuffled out of there within the hour (this must be management’s way of saving face for the other poor souls left working here). You might not hear it audibly, but your boss’s facial expression says it all, (yet another BAD ACCOUNTANT) as you leave the dreadful cube farm for the last time. How can one organization be so unlucky to have seen so many baddies? DON’T let the pretty atrium fool you into derailing your career and throwing you and your family’s security down the drain. Don’t give up on the field of Accounting/Controlling - stop envying the guy who cleans the toilets - it will get better for you - YOU WILL get your career back on track - once you get away from management here! AVOID this organization like the PLAGUE.
