My senior manager told me to ghost audit a portion of my WP because we couldn’t figure out how to filter the GL for opex and exclude capex. Not even the client knew how. We had a material misstatement and he wanted me to force the variances to 0.

I told him no. He rated me straight 5s (lowest bucket possible). This destroyed my self esteem. He quit right after the audit was completed. I begged to get taken off the file but they wouldn’t (despite thinking my work is bottom rating worthy). A handful of associates were “laid off” in my start group. At this point I cried because I knew I was going to get fired soon too. I was in panic mode.

I wrote a note on the piece of paper detailing all the shit my senior manager did. Explained that if they didn’t take me off the file I’d tell the partner.

They ended up taking me off the file. This cleared up my entire spring - fall. Nobody picked me up because of my rating but nobody fired me because of what I knew. Our firm had a policy if you were unassigned you can stay home if you are 15 mins from the office. I stayed at home collected a pay check for almost 6 months with the odd job here and there.

That feel when a first year audit associate could out politic senior managers at a big 4.