Big 4 Confessions

For ranting, venting, or just spilling those dirty little secrets about your big 4 experience.

[big4confessions]

No Dinners For You

From a friend of mine:

Her team was working late until 10 PM. The company policy is that if an employee is working past 8 PM, dinner can be expensed. However, the manager on this team refused to let the team order dinner, despite the fact that they worked hours past 8 PM. 

His reasoning: it’s not in the budget.

Well, your shitty attitude and mindset isn’t in my budget.

[big4confessions]

Ripped Off

Hi everybody, Another awful story about the big 4. At the firm I work at, raises are effective as of 7/1. I didn't see my raise in my first paycheck after 7/1, so I decided to call payroll. Long story short, they tell me that the firm told the payroll department that I was not eligible to receive retro pay on the period I worked after raises were effective, and that my raise was not effective until 8/1. I am currently undergoing the unnecessarily slow process of trying to get my retro pay, but if this doesn't work out - I will go straight to legal. Big 4 trying to not pay me the money I earned and is rightfully mine - classic.

[big4confessions]

Monitoring

This is actually a story of my own.

I work in the PwC New York office. I’m on this team that is very into micro-managing and constantly monitoring everybody. One day, the manager pulled us all into a meeting. She then spent the meeting complaining about the hours being charged to the client (even though we are forced to sit there until 6 PM every single day, regardless of when our work is done), stating that we’re charging these hours, but it doesn’t seem like the work is getting done. She then proceeded to tell us that the seniors will be monitoring our usage of any of the work chat systems (Sametime, Google Hangouts). “We’re here to work, not to chat.” She then continued to tell us that we must get approval from the manager on the team before booking any doctor appointments.

I didn’t realize that as a grown adult, that I needed to be monitored for such basic human actions. I think that after working 7 days a week, over 12 hours a day for 3 months straight, I fucking deserve to talk to whoever the hell I want to on the work chat system, and schedule my doctor appointments whenever the hell I want to. As long as my work gets done daily, who the fuck cares about what I am doing to keep myself going throughout the day? Pretty sure all of this is frowned upon by HR.

[big4confessions]

Introductions

Hello everybody,

Welcome to Big 4 confessions! Here, you can let go of all the anger, frustration, bitterness, and whatever negative feelings you have about your experiences working at one of the Big 4 accounting firms. I work at one of the Big 4 offices, and it fucking sucks. I made this blog, so that we who are suffering at one of these offices do not feel alone. It’s a great time to air out some of their dirty laundry.

Please feel free to submit any stories you may have through the submit link above. It’ll lead you to a google form, where you can let it all out. This is somewhat of a therapeutic experience for me, and I hope this blog can bring you the same experience as well. I am also open to any constructive criticism, since this is my first time utilizing a medium like this.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN.