My assistant, Johann, really needs to lift his game. Not only is he perpetually distracted by dating apps and other assorted alerts, he’s forever leaving cups of tea to go cold on top of the printer. Worst of all, though, is that he’s been complaining about the office layout to our clients, who apparently agree with him.

I found this out this morning when he casually mentioned it at the water cooler, adding that he never expected office design to be the strong suit of an accountancy firm. How rude! I happen to know for a fact that being an accountant and having good taste in design are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can be quite complementary – we have an inbuilt sense of efficiency.

True – perhaps it’s possible to go to far in cutting corners, which is what might have happened with that storage system we installed last year. We probably should have had that done by a company that specialises in high end office fitouts. Sydney probably has plenty of those, but we opted to get Mindy from HR’s nephew to do it a cut price. It’s not like everything in the office is sub par, though. 

I mean, sure – there are no surfaces in the kitchenette aside from the top of the printer. Now that I think about it, that explains Johann’s habit of placing cups on it. But then he shouldn’t whinge about the printer being next to the fridge, as he is wont to do, apparently.

Oh, alright. Fine. We could do with a bit of help in improving our office design. Sydney accountants, what do you suggest when it comes to taking your know-it-all assistant’s advice without appearing to do so? I can’t let that hipster think he’s in charge… can I? I suppose one solution would be to palm the office redevelopment project off onto him. Not a bad idea, really – let him deal with the logistics of commercial renovation and see how far he gets with it. Maybe it’ll give him more respect for number crunching.