Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Double Agents

Holla,

Accountants are weird. They sit around all day getting excited about excel spreadsheets and depreciation schedules. Some are more gung-ho than others when it comes to professional manners. Their level of joy in reading accounting pronouncements or hearing of tax structures is excessive. I am not one of these accountants.

People are also weird. They can appear completely normal in public. They get their coffee or the morning paper and move along with their day. You wouldn't think twice about them. But then, when they get home, their freak comes out. They obsess over feet, or aliens, or sucking the jelly out of donuts and leaving behind the empty casing. I am not one of these people.

What happens when these two personality types are combined into one person? Super weirdness, right? It's scary to think about. You wouldn't really want to be around this person, let alone work with him or her on a daily basis. You certainly wouldn't want to be married to them, right? What happens to the person that takes the weirdo's job?

Well, nothing as of yet...

Dan Bland was the former accountant for Traveltime. On the surface nothing seemed out of place. He was a middle aged guy, a little old school with his accounting tactics, preferring manual general ledger entries to adopting computerized accounting systems, but he was regarded as somewhat normal. He was important to the company and handled everything from bank deposits to financial statements. He was married with a couple of kids. Normal life, right?

Well, mostly. I guess the only thing that might appear a little strange was his obsession with young men... Who would have sex with him... In a hotel down the street from our offices.

Dan gayness wasn't what was strange. There are plenty of gay men that work in my office, and they are great. It's not that he was having sex with people younger than himself. That happens all the time. It was that he was married with children, and leading a completely seperate life on the side. It caused him to do some strange things...

...such as surfing the internet all day for porn. While looking through his old accounting documents, I came across a folder filled with his favorite internet links. Here are the names of a few of them:

-Young Boys First Time
-Western European Nudists Resorts
-Gay Tours
-Boys and Daddies

At one point Traveltime had a male receptionist. He was just out of high school and it was too much for Dan to handle. He would IM the receptionist throughout the day, sometimes with normal messages: "Has the mail come in," or "I'm expecting this call." Other times it would be less appropriate. To the point that the receptionist had to quit because he was feeling uncomfortable. Our boss offered to lay him off so that he could collect unemployment and not sue the company for sexual harrassment.

What ultimately lead to Dan leaving Traveltime wasn't this behavior. His trysts were known about, but they weren't openly discussed, and never directly dealt with. It was what his obsessions lead to which caused his dismissal.

Dan's double life wasn't cheap. The gay superspy took vacations, purchased presents, and spent a small fortune on personal grooming, while his married cover had to pay for mortgage payments and children's clothes. I can tell you from experience that this position doesn't pay enough to cover those expenses. Dan knew it too. He was a weird accountant after all. His solution? Stealing money.

And a lot of it. Over $100,000 in the last fiscal year. His credit cards were linked up with Traveltime bank accounts. He forged checks. He even withdrew from the petty cash fund. He was the only accountant in the company, and nobody knew what he was doing. It wasn't until he was on one of his many gaycations that he was caught. Another employee was on his computer, printing a check to Sears, and noticed a number of checks made out to Dan. Otherwise the embezzlement could have gone on for much longer.

I fell into Dan's job and have been dealing with the results of his actions for 4 months. The company can't really take any action against him because it would require an investigation of the accounting records. And, because Richard has mixed so many of his personal expenses with the company's, he is hesistant to reveal the information.

Dan is now the proud owner of a Quizno's franchise in the neighborhood. No one knows how his life is going, but I have some ideas. My best guess? His staff is chock full of teenage boys.

More to come...

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