"and that's why you will always be an accountant..."

I was watching the new Giorgio Locatelli show on BBC Food last night and it reminded me of an email that I had once sent to some Performance Manager who was challenging why we needed so much money to complete a certain project phase. It still brought a smile to my face recalling, my young and optimistic actions.

In hindsight it was probably something that I shouldn't have done, particularly as the person was rather high up on the food chain but I was just getting so frustrated about this penny shining, frugalness that had manifested itself within the organisation at that specific time.

We wanted to complete a piece of work that would have given us a competitive advantage in the field of Mobile Asset Tagging using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and not to spend all of our time shining the penny on one side and then turning it over and shining the other side, we just wanted to be left in peace to get it done.

As a project manager, I often find myself having to fight for the best resources and to fight even harder for the necessary budget to ensure that these resources are able to fulfil the vision which we as a team would like to achieve, something that is extremely difficult in a cost challenge environment.

But I got to the point where I just couldn't take all of the pettiness and recalled a story that Giorgio Locatelli had told on one of his shows by way of analogy. He described how he was constantly fighting with his accountant about the price of the ingredients that he sourced for his restaurant. His accountant had questioned why they had to pay two "quid" for a chicken when he knew he could get it for 70p, to which Giorgio said, "And that's why you will always be an accountant!"

The new show is equally charming, it appears to feature a lot more his lovely young daughter Margherita, a first name that is shared with my mother, who is an accountant. I never did get a response from the Performance Manager after I recalled the story and we did get the funds to finish that specific project phase.