Farewell to KPMG

So after 2 years, 8 months of pure grind, I accepted a new job offer and am leaving KPMG. Words can’t express the joy my wife feels, but I can certainly express some “greatest hits” if you will, in no particular order. Warning-this will take a while:
Copies- After returning from my new hire training and filling in for a few days on a job, my first “real” job was to be shipped up to Seattle for two weeks. My first day? I was lead to a 3 foot stack of paper and told to make copies of all of it. “Think of it as a rite of passage” my senior said. I had to unstaple, copy, re-staple the originals, collate and staple and punch the copies, and do it again. . . for 10 hours. My legs were killing me from standing all day long at the copy machine (I can’t think of a time before or since that I’ve stood in one place for so long). I was thinking all day long “I can’t believe I went to school for five years to do THIS!” True, in a way of sorts it was a good rite of passage, but it still sucked.
Woo’s Teriyaki- So my first year up in Washington I keep ordering the hot at my favorite Mongolian restaurant, Three Flames. So my manager Dan Rinehart tells me about the famous Woo’s Teriyaki, a small Chinese restaurant in Richland famous for it’s hot food. I tell him I’m up to the heat so we should go try it. We go to dinner one night, the waitress comes over to take our order.
“I want the teriyaki chicken, hot.” I say. She pauses, looks me up and down, and responds, “Have you had our hot?” Me-“No, why? Is it really that hot?” Her-“Where else have you eaten around here?” I respond the Mongolian restaurant up the street and I handle the hot there just fine. Her response: “See my friend the waitress over there? When she goes to the Mongolian she gets seven scoops of the hot. She can only handle the medium here.”
I sit back and try to take in what she has just told me; clearly a warning for any novice spicy-food eater. “I’ll take the hot”.
As soon as the chicken touched my lips I knew it was a bad call. Easily, and I mean by a wide margin, the hottest food I have ever had in my life (or will ever have for that matter). I put down about ½ of my order but couldn’t actually eat the entire thing. The waitress offered to take it to the back and rinse the chicken in some water to dull the heat. Clearly defeated, I denied the offer and just left the remaining chicken to waste and paid my bill. That was the first and last time I ate at Woo’s.
Speeding Ticket- I drove up to Washington once in a while during my summers of traveling every week. Being a 10 hour or so drive, you would assume you would want to make as good as time as possible. So one time I leave home around 3, get up to Brigham City/Tremonton area and hit a massive, unexpected storm that closes down the freeway for over an hour. So I’m sitting there parked on the freeway fuming mad at how much time I’m losing. So what do I do? Of course I try to “make up” time by speeding furiously the rest of the way up; well, furiously the rest of the way until I pass a black police car in the dead of night in Oregon. I had basically passed right in front of him before I saw him, and I immediately pulled over to the right lane and prepared to be pulled over because I was flying. Turns out he let me off extremely easy because I thought the speed limit was 75 since it was rural Oregon and the speed limit is actually 65 max throughout all of Oregon. When I called in to the county to pay the ticket the lady knocked the fee down another $100 so the pain wasn’t too brutal. Every time I drive through Oregon since that experience the speedometer hasn’t topped 65, not even your standard 5 miles over.
Triceraballs- So I’ve been with the firm like 3 months, all through busy season, and all I want to do is go play basketball with my friends on Wednesday night like we always do. I tell my Senior, “My wife gives me crap about playing ball every week and now you want to give me crap! Look, I don’t care what I have to do all I want to do is play basketball on Wednesday night I don’t care what the consequences!” He relents and allows me to go; I subsequently fill the rest of the day talking up about what a great baller I am. I actually for the only time in my life have a great night playing basketball, hitting a number of 3-point shots. So I come in the next morning to the audit room and the rest of the team is already there. “Call me 3-ball!” I announce with pride, referring of course to my great night of shooting 3-pointers; however, it was not understood as such. “3-ball? What is that supposed to mean?” The conversation quickly turns toward the gutter and heavy inquisition takes place regarding their way of understanding my “announcement”. They quickly modify the nickname through various revisions, settling on “triceraballs”. I receive a nice picture in my email later that day with a triceratops that has punctured 3 basketballs, which of course, triceratops had punctured in his self-defense against 3-ballasaurus Rex. I tried to watch what I said the rest of the engagement but I always found myself in compromising positions.
Dork Mormon from Utah- visiting the national trainings is quite the experience if you live in the bubble, which we obviously all do. My favorite example is the training I went to last year in Dallas. On Friday during the final class, we were organized into new groups for some reason. So the instructor decided to go around the room and have everybody introduce themselves, what office they are from, and “tell us what you did last night”. There were about 50-55 people in the room. Person after person stood up to tell about the insane experience last night of going to the biggest bar in Dallas and how they “rode the bull”. It was a wild party and everybody could nod in agreement as each person shared their sweet night of riding the mechanical bull. It comes to be my turn, I stand up and relate “I’m Brandon Ball from the Salt Lake City office, and last night I stayed in my hotel room and watched the NBA Draft.” I’m pretty sure the crowd knew something semi-lame was coming out of my mouth when they heard “Salt Lake City”. While I am who I am, it makes me laugh. For what it’s worth, we drafted Eric Maynor and traded him like 3 months later.
All-nighter­- I only pulled one official “all-nighter” during my time at KPMG, and even then it ended for me at about 4:30 in the morning, at which time I went home and slept for a couple hours before going back to work. I do remember from about 1-3 a.m. playing Rage Against the Machine on my computer for a couple hours. The Senior, who requested I play Rage, says after, “Well, now I remember why it’s been so long since I’ve listened to Rage”, of course referring to not liking the heavy screaming, etc. My response, “Funny, I was just thinking to myself about what a shame it is that I haven’t listened to Rage in so long” of course referring to how awesome Rage is. In case you’re wondering, that was the last time I listened to Rage.
Waterfast- So last busy season instead of having a “get fat” competition my team had a weight loss competition. Somehow, someway I started running at like midnight, outside in the cold, a few times a week. I also basically stopped eating dinner, thereby dropping my calorie count for the day drastically. We also had healthy snacks instead of complete sugar crap (with the exception of a large tub of jelly-belly’s). I had quite a few “blow days”, pretty much anytime a good lunch was offered or some other treat was offered, but I got to the final couple days within 5 pounds of my 20 pound weight loss goal. The due date was Wednesday, but on Monday I had a good lunch offer and decided I was giving up on the goal (worth $100 to me, but I was giving it up for a lunch, awesome). So I eat my lunch, which I don’t even remember what it was but I’m sure it was good, and I regret it in the afternoon, thinking “I could’ve made the goal if I just had some discipline!” I decide at that point that I’m going on a water-fast for the next 36 hours and dropping down 3-5 lbs to make my weight. I can tell you every temptation in the book was thrown at me over the next 36 hours, but I had nothing but water (and a lot of trips to the restroom) and woke up Wednesday morning at my goal. I still have the picture of the official weigh-in on my phone. I took the $100 and promptly gained back my 5 lbs. I am happy to say I’ve stayed at that weight though and haven’t put back on the remaining 15, for now.
Wings- Jackson’s sports bar up in Washington has all-you-can-eat wings on Wednesday nights. The first time I heard about it, I knew it would become a staple. For the rest of the travel year last year we hit up Jackson’s at least every other week (when you’re eating all you can eat wings and realize how much chicken you just ate after the fact, it usually takes longer than one week to get over it). On one of our final visits for the year in October, the waitress initiated our visit by pointing me out and saying “I know you love the golden garlic wings I’ll get an order ready for you”. While she was correct in noting my favorite flavor, I took due note that we had officially eaten there too many times that summer, considering she had never been our waitress before. At 25 wings I feel like you “made your money” since that was essentially the same price on other nights as the cost on the all-you-can-eat night. My personal record was 45 wings but a couple other guys tied and/or beat me in the overall standings. Their hottest sauce, “Atomic” isn’t quite the burner of Woo’s teriyaki but definitely leaves you reaching for the water. I would usually have just one Atomic wing last to say I did it, but other than that, stick with the Golden Garlic.
“Emily”- So my office always sends out a “farewell” email to let the rest of the office know who’s leaving to what new job, etc. So mine comes out this week and the final paragraph says “We wish Brandon, Emily, and their two children the best of luck. . . “ So I’m not sure who Emily is, but Rachel sure had a great response, typical of wives of public accountants, “I KNEW YOU HAD A MISTRESS!”

I’m out!