Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for April 05, 2009

Let’s make the beancounters redundant!

By Legume Von Beethoven.

wndwrthg, make that Legume Von Beanhoven. lol

Can someone please explain this one to me poor German? Beancounter doesn’t ring a bell…

A “beancounter” is an accountant (from the days of using an abacus….)

HerrB - Buchhalter

A “beancounter” is an accountant so adept at math he can successfully guess the number of beans or jellybeans in a jar. These uber - accountants are so bottom - line oriented that when they are put in charge of companies, they suck all the creativity out of them and run them into the ground. (e.g. General Motors).

It took me a while to get this one. Maybe I still don’t. I agree with jnik but, more specifically, a bean-counter manages by cutting costs – period. And, in this day and age, that generally means layoffs.

Look at the cartoon with this in mind, and the single musician playing a bunch of instruments.

Your definitions don’t capture the negative connotation of “beancounter.”

I think of it as someone so nit-picky that, not content to inventory the sacks/cans, he has to count the individual beans, within the larger context of working for the company to cut costs.

I wondered if Wiley was going for something I once saw in a corporate magazine. He wasn’t; this is completely original, as far as I know. But it’s worth recounting anyway…

The article is entitled “A Style of Management”. The picture that goes with it is a conductor on a podium, not unlike the third frame of this cartoon. Where the score should be, there is instead a note, “Wave the stick until the music stops. Then turn around and bow.”

Somehow, in this day and time, this cartoon is a whole lot less than funny. Don’t get me wrong – I love it, and Wiley always finds the best ways to twist the knife. It’s just too true to be funny.

I’m with you, Tristan. Especially with the arts being where they are; our city opera company just went bankrupt and it’s happening everywhere. The arts are the first thing to go in a world like this and it’s sad because they’re what we need to get through. Pardon the soapbox rant from a musician.

Beancounting is also about supply and demand. Notice only two people in the audience.

Well done, Wiley.

I’m so ignorant. I had to read most of the comments before I understood the comic!

Art and science are expendable but it seems that sports are untouchable.

Thanks for all the comments - it helped me see it the way it was probably meant. But as a “bean counter” of sorts (NOT) I’m a CPA, I just started laughing because all the CPA’s are out doing taxes right now and can’t be doing anything else.

Guess the musician could’ve have just used the TUBA :000000 Beans the music fruit the more you eat the more you TOOT. O.K. it just me that saw it a different way ;-}

As a retired accountant, I have saddly watched the accountants of the world go from being the boring guys to being the bad guys, in the minds of the public. We’re really quite jovial, vivacious and life of the party types. Honest, trust me, please!! To illustrate, I thought the cartoon was hillarious.

Yes, Grazer, but in the arts, it’s a chicken/egg dilemma. Demand wanes as the quality supply disappears.

Since my local paper prints this comic in B&W in the classified section I was rather stumped about the joke and punchline until I saw it in color. Now I get it and find it quite funny. Bean counters are also in some circles called, “efficiency experts.” They aren’t always Accountants

It took me a while to understand what a bean counter was, but, being a musician, I got the gist of this comic right off the bat. It is too true to make me smile.

Of course, I think we can all be sure that the Executive Director, or whoever was making the decisions, received a nice bonus for his/her brilliant cost-saving ideas and measures. At least, that’s the way it works in the private sector…   “We aren’t profitable enough to keep you, but we are profitable enough that my bonuses kick in.”

Mr. Wiley,

I think this cartoon is a great metaphor for US corporate business practices. I appreciate your illustration of this foolishness.

Thanks for the laugh!

See where downsizing gets ya? If you win the race to the bottom, you still end up on the bottom.

yes, bean counters are now known as efficiency experts, but how can they be experts when what they are overseeing is something they have never done and never will.

chastd says:

Yes, Grazer, but in the arts, it’s a chicken/egg dilemma. Demand wanes as the quality supply disappears. That might explain why everyone quit rushing out to buy more Chinese junk. The race to the bottom, initiated by the likes of Wal-Mart, has ended…we’re there. With consumerism making up 70 % of U.S. GDP, it’s going to be a long haul back up to the ‘new normal.’

It must be terrible symphony!