Might-have-been accountants-Publication

Author: Lidia Snarskaya, PR-Manager, BDO Unicon Outsourcing

The list of BDO Unicon Outsourcing employees includes people with astounding hobbies – starting from reading ancient Japanese literature in the original to female boxing and cross-country motorcycle racing in far abroad. And yet these people manage to combine such hobbies with successful careers in accounting. Meanwhile, we managed to compile a list of might-have-been accountants who proved unable to combine two occupations:

O. Henry

William Sydney Porter’s life was full of sharp turns. After obtaining his pharmacist licence, he had to go to a rancho in Texas because of tuberculosis, became an accountant and bookkeeper, ended up in jail for embezzlement, took flight and came back to see his dying wife before being back to jail. He brought this melodrama and trick endings into his short stories that won him fame under his pen name O. Henry.

Alexander Vertinsky

Prior to the stage, the life of this renowned musician, poet, and movie actor looks like a set of career failures. He lost his position of an accountant in Evropeiskaya hotel in Kyiv “due to inaptitude”. Had he demonstrated the same commitment in finance as he subsequently demonstrated in arts, we would have never learnt “how good it is without women and words”.

Mikhail Zoshchenko

Zoshchenko’s life was rough: military service, front line, wounds, heart attack and years of persecution. In order to survive, the writer-to-be would take any work he was offered: he worked as a cobbler, rabbit breeding instructor, and at a certain point, as an assistant accountant of Petersburg naval base. Zoshchenko did not succeed in finance and was reportedly dismissed for embezzlement.

Symon Petliura

Petliura served as an accountant in Rossiya insurance company for as long as three years and a bit earlier held a similar position in Kyiv in Eastern Transport Partnership, due to which Mikhail Bulgakov would ironically refer to him as to “a famous accountant” in his satire.

There are also might-have-been accountants whose career in finance hardly started before ending. And all for the better.

Robert Plant

From an early age, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin (1968–1980), one of the most successful British rock bands, was keen to become a musician, while the father of the future star wanted his son to make a career in finance. When he was 16, the boy was even enrolled in a bookkeeping training programme, but he took flight in two weeks to devote his life to arts.

Mick Jagger

Apparently, England abounds in rock’n’roll accountants. At some point, even Mick Jagger, the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, wanted to make a career in finance: for almost a year, he studied in the London School of Economics, but abandoned his studies without waiting until the summer examination period.

Janet Jackson

Michael Jackson’s younger sister got a degree in finance. In one of her interviews, Janet said that had she not succeeded as a musician, she would have become an accountant. But show business ultimately prevailed.