Welcome to the bullshit-faux-holidays-that-accountants-don’t-get-off edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. Today we have a new Big 4 associate who’s wondering how much trouble he could get in for a recent arrest for pot possession. If his firm finds out will they just blow it off or is his career baked?
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Now, then:
I just started at a Big 4 firm and to celebrate the college life being over my friends had a party over Labor Day weekend. To cut to the point, I ended up being arrested and charged with marijuana possession in a city about 2 hours away from my office. I had a prior arrest for marijuana from 4 years prior as well. Basically, my question is, how likely is it that the firm finds out about this incident without me telling them? Also, if they do find out does this mean automatic termination?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Dear Stoney Jabroni,
Let me just say first that I’m not a lawyer, so take this advice for what it’s worth (not much more than a dime bag). Having said, that, your solution is easy. Move to Colorado. Or California. Or anywhere pot is decriminalized. Maybe I’m misinterpreting “arrested” but here in in the MHC, for example, adults don’t really get “arrested” for possession of less than one ounce and thus, there is really no problem. I realize this is probably unrealistic advice but your state’s laws will ultimately determine how “serious” this really is. Generally, this is not a serious issue but if you’re in state that likes to throw the book at marijuana users, then it gets more complicated.
To answer your first question – since you work in a city that’s two hours from where your arrest occurred, it’s pretty unlikely that anyone at your firm will find out you had your little run-in with the law. Unless, of course, there’s townie that would go out of their way to contact your firm to fink on you. That seems unlikely but, hey! you never know.
As far as termination is concerned, it depends on the agreement that you signed when you accepted your offer. If you’re held to specific code of conduct, it’s possible that this arrest could violate that code. If there’s nothing in the agreement that would cover something like this, your firm doesn’t really have grounds to dismiss you. There are plenty of Big 4 employees and partners that enjoy a nice toke every now and again and it is more socially accepted than ever. If someone at your firm does get a whiff of this news, certainly some will frown on this behavior and you may get a talking to but does it mean the end of your career? That’s just wack, man.
My general go to is “Hey – when you have the brainpower can I have 5 minutes to chat about X please?”
And I only send messages when I see they are marked as available (and occasionally offline), not when marked as Busy/DND.
A vote for “ping” or “…” – given the use of screen sharing over Zoom, it can be useful to give the recipient a chance to hide their chat window off screen share.
“we need to discuss Steve’s poor performance immediately”
*Steve is watching screen*
So I had something kinda like this happen. Big boss had his iMessage connected to the spare Mac in my office that my coworker sometimes used. Coworker motions me over one day because all these messages are popping up between my boss and big boss, my boss was talking MAD shit in texts about me, my coworker, pretty much everyone in the department. I didn’t stick around much longer after that.
100% This! Dealing with busy season burn out – waiting for them to type that whole message gave me so much anxiety.
If talking is faster than typing, and you’re in a big fucking hurry because you’re soooo busy, then why not just call the person you need to communicate with?
I know, I know…”Tell me you’re an old fart without telling me you’re an old fart.”