At the end of last year, my office received various paraphernalia from Sage (the business software suppliers), which included a small, free calendar. Very helpful for the year going forwards, you might think. But the sting in the tail is that there is what is meant to be an “interesting fact” about accountancy on each month’s page.
I don’t often feel sorry for marketing guys, but it’s clear that the ones involved in this calendar had a serious lack of inspiration. It’s hardly surprising, really. After all, accountancy isn’t “interesting” in the same way that the theory of relativity is interesting, or how Sam Worthington was turned into a Smurf is interesting, or how cutting off your own head and then attempting to flush it down the lavatory is interesting.
On the contrary, accountancy tends to be – and this is a surprise – quite boring actually, as these “interesting facts” testify. So…. drum roll, please… here are the interesting facts that I’ve uncovered from the Sage calendar so far:
January: “In 1853 Edinburgh and Glasgow both set up their own Institute of Accountants.”
Hmmm. That only rates about one and a half on my Stevedavisometer, to be perfectly honest. Maybe this month’s will be better.
February: “On 6 February 1871 the Manchester Institute of Accountants was formed in the home city of Sage Accountants’ Division.”
If anything, that’s even worse. But the marketeers seemed to realise this, for amazingly, the term “interesting fact” is NOT used for the second example, only the first! Was it a Freudian slip? A design error? The text in danger of overrunning?
Or maybe it was because the person in charge of checking the calendar decided to kill himself by means of the aforementioned cutting-off-his-own-head-and-then-attempting-to-flush-it-down-the-lavatory.
Yeah, I’m going with that. It’s certainly more “interesting”, no?
Stay tuned for March’s air quotes interesting fact, exclusively on The Mirrorball next month.
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