A heartfelt tribute to the darkest profession ever conceived
So you’re thinking about becoming a bookkeeper. First of all—don’t. But if it’s too late—if you’ve already been lured into the fluorescent-lit labyrinth of spreadsheets and financial despair—then there’s nothing left to do but offer condolences and prepare you for the fall.
Bookkeeping isn’t a job. It’s a slow unraveling of the human spirit dressed up in khakis and an “I’m just behind on some reports” smile. Once you start, reality begins to shift. You stop speaking in sentences and begin communicating entirely in numbers, muttering things like “Q3 projections were a lie” under your breath at the grocery store. Your friends stop inviting you places after your third unsolicited monologue on depreciation schedules. The numbers aren’t just numbers anymore—they’re everywhere. They whisper to you at night.
Receipts become your most precious companions. Actual living children, spouses, pets—irrelevant. You now pour all of your emotional capacity into a warped file box labeled “Misc Expenses 2018,” because inside, somewhere in the folds of a faded Shell gas receipt, lies the answer to why your ledger is off by exactly $7.83. And until that mystery is solved, nothing else matters. Not birthdays. Not world peace. Not oxygen.
Your computer is no longer a machine, but a haunted mirror reflecting your deepest flaws. QuickBooks, having gained sentience, actively resists your attempts to control it. It gaslights you with cheerful pop-ups as it devours transaction records and auto-categorizes everything as “Other Income” with the petty spite of a gremlin. You beg the scanner to stop eating expense reports. The printer jams like it’s trying to spare you from finishing your work. IT support can no longer help you—they’ve begun referring to your workstation as “the cursed one.”
Time itself begins to fracture. While others age naturally, you exist in an eternal Groundhog Day of Month-End Close. Just when you think you’ve emerged, clutching a finished P&L and a vague sense of hope, it resets. There is no beginning. There is no end. Just reconciling and the soft hum of fluorescent lights overhead. You try to take a vacation, but the spreadsheets follow you. You dream in pivot tables and wake up screaming about undeposited funds.
Eventually, you cross over into the IRS Dimension—a swirling void of cryptic tax codes and acronyms no mortal should ever know. You tried to explain a 1099-NEC to someone once, but your voice dropped an octave and bees began to swarm. Every time a client says, “But I thought I didn’t have to report that,” you lose five years off your life and gain a new gray hair shaped like the word “audit.”
And slowly, but inevitably, your soul is replaced with a ledger. You no longer feel happiness, only reconciliations. When someone asks how you’re doing, you answer, “Accrued.” You no longer cry tears, just trickle a little printer toner from your left eye. Your heart beats in double-entry format.
Bookkeeping doesn’t choose the well-adjusted. It finds you alone in a Staples parking lot at dusk and whispers, “You are mine now.” You wake up with a CPA study guide under your pillow and an unexplainable craving for office supplies. This is the path you’ve chosen—or perhaps, the path that chose you.
The Ides of March are upon us! So to all the brave, broken souls out there hammering away at their keyboards, cross-eyed from decimal points and caffeine—know that you are not alone. You are legion. And your receipts are sacred. Just don’t ever, ever lose the one from March 14th. You know the one. The system depends on it…. depends on it…. depends on it… (having fallen asleep at the keyboard helm, you’ll enter into a dream sequence that goes something like this):
The Ides of March are upon us! Oh, there once was a Caesar, bold and sly, who filed meals as meetings and claimed the sky. With charm he signed each line and sheet—but he lost one slip, and thus met defeat: the cursed, forgotten March 14th receipt. Heave ho, balance the sheet! Mind your margins and watch your feet! Reconcile before you sleep, or be sunk by March Fourteen’s receipt.
The Ides of March are upon us! Now Brutus, the faithful, with numbers in hand, once stood beside Caesar to steady the land. But he saw through the columns, the doctored delights—three dinners in one night, and all “business rights.” With a whisper from Cassius and a nod from HR, he knew Caesar’s math had wandered too far. Heave ho, balance the sheet! Flag the fraud and admit defeat! May your QuickBooks run discrete, and beware the March Fourteenth receipt.
The Ides of March are upon us! Cassius was sly, with a phone in each coat. He tracked every error, each creative note. “A koi pond expensed as a team-building need? Caesar’s empire is built on unmentionable greed!” So he turned to young Brutus, whose heart split in twain, and they plotted the audit through caffeine and pain. Heave ho, balance the sheet! Caesar’s hubris tastes bittersweet. From Rome to cubicle elite—none outrun March Fourteen’s receipt.
The Ides of March are upon us! Now Calpurnia cried, “It’s a prophecy’s mark! I saw forms unsigned in the copier’s dark!” But Caesar just laughed with a spreadsheeted grin: “Let the IRS come—I always win.” Yet when Brutus revealed that damning file, and Caesar beheld that long audit’s mile, he gasped, “Et tu?” with sorrow and fright, then was crushed by a copier jammed mid-flight. Heave ho, balance the sheet! Audit ghosts cannot be beat. Don’t expense your yacht as a business fleet, and never lose March Fourteen’s receipt.
The Ides of March are upon us! he Bookkeeper came like a wraith in the night, robes made of W-2s, eyes glowing white. He held the receipt, stained faintly with wine, and laid it upon Caesar’s form one last time. “You lost your way in a labyrinth of lies—your deductions were vast, but truth never dies.” And the ghosts of old fiscal years sang from the void, of startups collapsed and policies toyed. Heave ho, balance the sheet! Tell no fibs in your balance sheet! Let your ledger be kind and neat, and record your March Fourteen’s receipt.
The Ides of March are upon us! Now Brutus sits solemn, alone at the helm, steering through spreadsheets in a paperless realm. He leads with precision, and sorrowful grace, with Caesar’s downfall etched deep in the base. “We file again,” he mutters at dawn, “a new quarter begins, the old king is gone.” Heave ho, balance the sheet! Let the fiscal gods be sweet. And above all rules you dare to cheat… never lose March Fourteen’s receipt.
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