18. Brooke Briody: Accounting jokes (5/1)

INFO:
There are 3 types of accountants. Those who can count and those who can’t.

How does Santa’s accountant value his sleigh? Net PRESENT value.

Where do homeless accountants live? In a tax shelter.

BACKGROUND:
The informant is going to be an accountant soon, but was told the story during a friend’s birthday party, when a random man at the party walked up to her group of friends and tried to chat them up with a series of cheesy accounting jokes, not realizing that she and many of her friends were accounting majors at USC.

CONTEXT:
The informant shared this with me in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
While these jokes are ostensibly for people in the accounting occupation, someone with a basic understanding of what the profession entails (dry, “nerdy”) can also hear these jokes and find them funny, not because they’re funny but because they’re so in line with popular perceptions of what accountant humor is like.