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Accounting News Roundup: Gen Z Are the Game Changers Now; Fraud for Travel; Hamburgers | 06.01.17

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Millennial-ish

Great news everyone, millennials are over. You can expect the people in charge of bombarding the Internet to focus on a new crop of vexing young people:

Big corporations, particularly in traditional fields such as accounting and insurance, are feeling the pressure to appeal to Gen Z. “We really need to tell them we’re not just a stodgy health insurance company,” Keran says. “We need to show them how we’re trying to be game-changers, and we need young people like them to do it.”

And here I thought millennials were going to be the ones to help stodgy businesses become game changers. I suppose the people in charge will keep asking new generations of workers to change things by acquiescing to their ways until one of the groups goes extinct.

Accountants behaving badly

Last fall, we touched on the story of Deborah Yosick, an accountant in Ohio who stole over $1 million from her employer whom she had worked for 30 years. Ms. Yosick was sentenced to over four years in prison yesterday, and we sorta learned why she had the sticky fingers:

Federal prosecutors wrote that when Yosick was caught, she said she did it because her family wanted to travel more. Defense attorney Michael Bly reiterated that on Wednesday, saying that his client didn’t have an alcohol or gambling addition, but that her “desire to travel had the same impact on her” and it “snowballed out of control … so far over her head.”

[Judge Walter] Rice said in nearly five decades in court, he’d never heard of someone embezzling because they wanted to travel more, calling it “mind-boggling” but adding there’s “no legitimate explanation.”

Check me if I’m wrong, but if her reasons for taking the money were legitimate, we wouldn’t all be here, right? The point is, some people steal to up their lifestyle and I’d argue that “her family wanted to travel more” is within that realm. Whether that’s rooted in some irrational envy or plain ol’ keeping up with the Joneses or whatever, I don’t know. I do know that we’re less than a generation away from courtrooms packed with embezzling accountants who will blame social media FOMO for their crimes. I feel like that should be an episode in the next season of Black Mirror.

Elsewhere in ABB: An accountant accused of stealing $80k from her employer claimed that she “intended to repay everything and even offered to help the businesses owner” figure out the amount she took. “The owner declined her offer.”

Food

Yesterday, I complained about “lunch and learns” because those two things should not go together. Today in food stuff, the Wall Street Journal continues its lamentations about the “end of lunch,” specifically, that hamburgers are out of control:

Brian Cockerline, a 20-year-old Rutgers University student, used to go to Five Guys for a burger once a week in South Plainfield, N.J. With fries and a drink, his tab was about $13.

Now, he is cooking burgers at home instead.

“I like Five Guys, but I can buy ground beef and one onion and get pretty close to the same burger for half the cost,” said Mr. Cockerline, who rarely goes to Five Guys anymore. “A hamburger, to me, is not a luxury,” he said.

Five Guys declined to comment.

Brian goes to Wendy’s now, and I can’t help but wonder if Brian has a hamburger dependency. He’s ditching top shelf for the stuff right behind the counter just to get by. Seek help, Brian.

But honestly, how many burgers does the average American eat? Answer: 3 a week, according to this 2012 PBS report. That appears reasonable, given that it probably spikes to 10-12 around the meat sweat holidays of Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. So, I guess that means Brian’s not alone in his burger addiction. I don’t expect people to start meeting in church basements to talk about it, though.

Previously, on Going Concern…

I wrote about an accounting grad who chose a football team over KPMG.

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