As part of my “esteemed profession”, I get to meet quite a lot of people. People of different kinds…so different, that it amuses me at times :-O
To give some random samples of what happens in a typical everyday client facing experience of an auditor –
- When asked if they have a Disaster Recovery Procedure in place for the business, this guy (my client contact) replies “we pray” !!!!
- There was this one gentleman who addressed me as “madam” till the office hours and post that it was “beta” – so much for professionalism!!
- In yet another instance, while we were in endless discussions on the issues identified and this guy hopelessly trying to convince me to write stuff his way and frustrated with the stubborn ground I put in, said “you are a tough nut to crack” – making it just more verbal of how he deals with "the nuts” every now and then!
- Deal with a person for about a fortnight, make his life a living hell, untiringly shoot questions at him one after another and just about when you start building an acquaintance, end up with a long list of issues and tell the same fellow that he is not doing his work well enough (EHAHAHA) that’s not it –its mostttttttt embarrassing/ arduous/ uncomfortable, when I tell it to a person three times my age – he probably would have started his career when I started to walk!
- I tell a client "four out of ten things I checked was not in line with the process" and he tells me “its only 40% na, maaf kardo”!!!!
- Another client, irritated that I did not heed to his requests of changing the details to suit his convenience, calls me twice to inform, he is calling my manager – what he expects me to say is way beyond my understanding – Should I be saying (according to him) “no-no please don’t call my manager (sounding terrorized)!!!!! Du-huh!! (btw – he never called my manager!)
- This one person, after discussing a potential issue, came up with a common association we might have (ex: my mom taught in the same school as his son studied) – the more the issues, the quest to find more common associations increased!!
- One of the chaps, called his subordinate and said “these youngsters have something to say”– Ahem!
- At the end of allllllll this - almost all of them say "you can be assured to come back with the same issues in the next year" - so much for audit!!!
Sometimes in the process, we lose our individual identity I suppose. Right from the security guard, to the receptionist, to the heads of departments – we introduce ourselves as “Auditors” and we are also introduced amogst themselves as "auditors". Then, if need be comes the name!!
At times, we are the means of getting work done by the staff for the middle management and at other times, the staff would use the “auditors’ ” reference to get access to office information/gossip from the managers!
It’s funny, how we go about our work, even after knowing every person coordinating with us there loathes us with all his heart, for every smile given there is almost always an inner dialogue of hatred – yet, we flout all such feelings of despise and brazenly get going with work!
But stil we robotically go back to these people year after year after year and in between this struggle to handle all the sweet talks, the threats, the reluctance, the disgust – we end up training ourselves to handle almost all varieties human species!!!
Thus, the day ends with a smirk on either’s face and a mutual feeling – they feel they’ve tricked the dumb and vice-versa ;-) !!!
