By: Ken Boone It's been 21 years since I left the last real job I ever had. Now, I've since worked in many other "corporate situations", as I like to call them. I considered them short-term gigs, although some of them actually lasted for a number of years. I started my career at D&T prior to the merger of two of the country's largest accounting firms, Deloitte Haskins & Sells and Touche Ross & Co. Back in the late 1980s, companies did a lot of that. Staid accounting and law firms were no exception. We heard that there was quite a bit of simmering hostility because of two dirty words regarding mergers - job duplicity. That term was the reason given for many careers being derailed. I was lucky that, at the time, I was doing back-office support work. I had much more paper to push. I was a former Touche employee, and although we had the better office digs, most of the plumb post-merger positions went to Deloitte people . So, the Deloitte people simply packed up their Times Square- adjacent offices and move into our space. It seemed like yesterday when the Touche General Counsel called us into one of the conference rooms to announce that he was being replaced by his Deloitte counterpart. He also announced that most of his deputies were being demoted. Well, not actually demoted, but their Deloitte counterparts would be outranking them. It came as no surprise when I was picked to be on the Legal Department's transition team. My job was simple - I was the one-man welcoming committee. Showing you where they kept the paper clips and where to get a good cheap lunch in the area was right in my wheelhouse. The merger was completed in 1990. My plan was to stay with the merged company for another year before moving on to greener pastures. I won't say that the transition was drama-free, but I can assure you that I did my best to build as many bridges at the new firm as possible. D&T made it through economic downturns, the S&L crisis, the litigation craze, the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the spinning off of some of our business divisions. We survived because we stuck together. I even leaned heavily on my friends at D&T when my life was going a little crazy. That year of staying on quickly became two years, then five years, when I became vested in the firm's pension plan. By the time I finally left the firm to start my media company (for the first time), what as initially a two-week temp assignment ended up being an 11-year stint at one of the most prestigious organizations in the world! I'm getting nostalgic because I just finished drafting a contract termination letter to my latest, and hopefully final, short-term corporate gig. I know that I left this organization in better shape than when I first arrived. Whether my client agrees with me or not, I still cool. That's because one score and one year ago, I said goodbye to the best, and last, job I ever had! But wait... there's more!
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About the AuthorAs owner of the Descant Music & Media Group, Ken is a creator and producer of several podcast shows. He is also a music producer, as well as a writer and an accountant for small businesses and nonprofits. Archives
June 2020
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