Another great example of competing companies has got to be gas stations. One gas station changes their price, and it starts a huge hurricane of competition to be the one with the cheapest gas, until one of the companies doesn't want to go any lower, and we have a winner!

Yet another thing that bugs me is being in the grocery store and having all of these different “fancy” products. For example, I want a bag of bagels, so I go to the bread isle, and what I see is as follows: extra flaky bagels, whole wheat bagels, white bagels made with whole wheat, white bagels with sesame seeds, whole wheat bagels with sesame seeds, and finally, extra large bagels. Where in the isle am I supposed to find a plain bagel? I don't want anything fancy I just want a bagel!

But of all of company competition, the one thing that absolutely bugs me most of all is when companies say that they are the best. Notice how nowadays, every product or company that is seen on T.V. is the best there is. Whoever they are, they have the best prices and they have the best quality. Most companies want you to go out of your way to save money. If you want to get five dollars of you have to go home, fill out a long form for a mail in rebate, Put it in an envelope, address the envelope, buy a stamp at the store, go to the post office and mail it, and then wait a few weeks for them to send you a check for five dollars. In my opinion, they know we are not going to bother, and that's why they make mail in rebates, it allows them to put a lower price on their flyer or ad, and then make more money at the cash register. That is my opinion on company competition.

When you start in the accountancy profession you are told that the ultimate aim is to achieve partnership. Pass your exams, keep your nose clean, put in the hours and eventually you will make it and be able to sign on behalf of the firm. Then untold riches will be yours.

I am a writer, not an accountant, but many of my friends and relations are accountants and from them I have pieced together a very strange picture of the role of the partner in the big accountancy firms today.

The brightest?

First of all I always thought that it was the brightest who are appointed to the partnership. This may have been the case at one time but now isn't necessary. Most large professional firms invest considerable resources to have departments full of senior managers with the sole task of to reviewing other professionals work. These are people whose whole lives are devoted to ensure that all work leaving the firm has a consistent high quality and thus protect the firm from litigation. In the olden days, that is 10 years ago, partners did this. It was the partners who were responsible for reviewing the quality of everything that would go out in the name of the firm. Partners would be chosen primarily for their technical ability and their personal quantities would be a purely a secondary factor. The professional reviewing department frees today's partners from needing to have the ability to do this work and so they are free to concentrate on the nitty-gritty of drumming up new business and office politics

PR role?

Increasingly a partner's role is seen as developing client relationships. This includes wining and dining and also giving overall direction to the work of the managers under them. Partners may not necessarily be competent to give detailed advice to clients: they may just be glorified P.R. referral points who get one of their specialist managers to get back to the client with an answer. Partners no longer become industry experts as today's auditing pattern means that they will only develop a relationship with the client for a few years before the partner responsible for that client is changed.

Boosting profits

Conflicts often arise between the need for client care and the firm's self- interest. In years gone by it would be that the client would be put first and the firm's interest would not enter the equation. This situation is now reversed and many newer partners are primarily motivated by self interest - linking their self interest to the self interest of the firm. Consequently we should not be surprised when we hear of a partner of a well-known firm saying in a meeting with other professionals "Stuff the client. We want to get the deal done".

Salesmanship

Thus the way to become a partner is not through technical excellence but by developing the personal qualities and style of salesmanship that fits the corporate ethos of the particular large firm concerned. If your firm has just appointed some young, loud-mouthed lad, full of bull to the partnership, who is not technically very bright, you now know why!