PAS 39 - Unfair Value?

Today I received a mail asking me to pay the dues for my tardiness. Yes, my tardiness equivalent to Php2,430. My name’s in the top of the list sent to everyone in the cluster. Prior to that, they were asking everyone to commit their payment date. Some did commit this payday. Some commit to pay in full. Some in piecemeal. Some names are highlighted in yellow. Yellow means no commitment at all. My name is in yellow.

I am an auditor. I am working more than enough for a day. My working hours is not a boxed type like 8:00am to 5:00pm. I work overtime most of the time and overnight sometimes. My workload: Tons. My salary: Nevermind. Overtime charges: Waived.

Here comes a rule of the cluster. Penalties for tardiness! Those who will come and sign in the timesheet on or before 8:30am are safe. 8:31am to 9:00am, 20 pesos then 50 pesos 9:01am onwards. Unfortunately, if you forgot to sign, that’s 70 pesos my dear.

Here’s a brief profile, though I’m still lucky for having less than normal (is 10 the normal number of clients here?) number of accounts handled.
Accounts handled: 1 Bank with 3 financial statements, 1 Managed Fund with 2 financial statements, 2 service-oriented entities with 2 financial statements,

Deadlines: 3 overdue financial statements, February 27, March 5 and March 16, Weekly meetings, and so many instant deadlines.

Let’s talk about the Standards of Accounting while is the backbone of auditing. Have you heard the word “fair value”? It’s everywhere in the Standards 1 to 42, and PFRS 1 to 8, and in the IFRICs. We’ve been dealing with all of these standards everyday. I’ve been dealing with computations on how to get that damn “fair value” of assets and liabilities. Pricing models and functions, appraisals, actuarials, valuations, present values, discounted cashflows, impairment, and so on and so forth. Amen. But what really is fair?

Wouldn’t it be fair if you take my shoes? It would. Take it and tell me if it really is.

I am not abiding by the rule anymore. I did before. I pay promptly. Try to catch up to time schedules. Passed, missed, passed then missed. But most of the time, missed. I know I didn’t play well, and I paid the consequences.

Soon, the season’s starting again and I can’t comply anymore. My body clock’s back to evening shift. I was waiting for someone to lift the rule. No one did. I started not to sign. Two consecutive weeks, as a signal. A red light. I was waiting for someone to open up and help me. People, I can’t catch up anymore. No one did. Instead, that’s when the “no signing = 70pesos” started. I continued my silent protest. This is too much. This is not reasonable. I am asking you to pull me up, not to let me drown and suffer more. And even more, why tell everyone that I owe you this much? That’s equivalent to a slap on my face.

I know my shortcomings. I am trying to keep up and do whatever I am asked to do. Prepare what I am asked to prepare. Deliver what I am asked to deliver. It may not always be on the dot, but I tried. Wasn’t that fair enough? I am not charging my overtime because we’re all concerned about the profitability of the engagement, not sleeping enough just to meet deadlines, missing so many things about life, just to have your promised experience and marketability. Wasn’t that fair enough?

I’ve done my share on what is fair. Do your share too. I have paid my shortcomings; don’t ask me to pay more.

I am really unmotivated to work. I never wanted this. I don’t like the feeling that I hate my job because I understand the dignity of labor. But this is so unreasonable.

I just want to take a rest. I just want to go home. Be with my family and live a simple life. There, I know, fair or not fair, they will accept me.

All I want now is to finish the job soon and find a better place for me.

Patience Has No Price Anymore

I was working on some rollforward of principal for about an hour. I can't roll it over, can't find the breakdown of the contributions and withdrawals for the year, can't figure how the differences occurred. Can't do it anymore. I thought I can do this. I've been doing this for three years and I thought patience was the right formula. A formula that suggests that whenever there are differences in the figures, you just have to squeeze it to "patience". For two years, I've been successfully rewarded by the price of patience.

Now, on my third year, I figured out that there's other formula better than what I've been using for the last two years. "Escape".

Young and underpaid. Stressed. Depressed. Suppressed.

The world here is revolving in a different way. My patience formula can no longer adapt. It's not working. It's just not working.

So long, so long. I'll be out here to keep my patience formula.

The Psychology of Criticism

I would like you to get a piece of clean paper. Look at it clearly and answer my question, “what do you see?” I bet your answer would be “it’s clean”, or “it’s white.” Now, I want you to put a big dot anywhere in the paper using a pen. I ask you again “what do you see?” I hope you would understand soon what I mean when you answer my question.

Everyone has their own weaknesses. Same goes about strengths. Our weaknesses and strengths are within us everyday - on actions we do, words we say, things we don’t have and do have, things we abhor and adore, our past experiences and future goals, our habits and likes – who we are. And who we are is defined by ourselves and by other persons by judgments, opinions, facts and experience. Do you still remember what you answered in my latter question?

The paper is who we are. The clean surface represents the good things we do. These are our virtues. The dot represents our vices. Vices are the most perceptible/observable qualities while virtues are just virtues we own. They’re like invisible coatings. I wouldn’t wonder if on the latter question, you mentioned the dot first before the clean surface or maybe you didn’t even recognized that there still a clean surface. I also had the same answers when asked the first time.

This is the sad part of life. A norm that is biased, unreasonable and shameful. In response, we just say “well, you can’t please everybody…” Yeah, right. But you see and experienced the effects. You became conscious on several things. Become dissatisfied, unmotivated and sometimes, in denial.

When you do well, you do good, period. When you do badly, you do the worst… and so on and so forth…

There are so many unreasonable things going on here. I am bad at some points but I am trying to be better on some points too. Can’t that be enough?