Backed up on questions right now, I will try and get to the interesting ones but it will take me time.
Can you talk some about the cuisine?...Seriously, after 3 years of auditing, the thought of a decent lunch is what keeps me going.
1) Bring lunch from home - There are usually three types of people who bring lunch from home: people who live at their parents' home, people who are married, and women (pardon my sexism, I'm just saying'). These lunches are usually a sandwich with a can of soda. Some mix it up and get some pasta, or chicken and rice, or something on those lines. Then you have people from Asia, who end up getting ethnic food with all sorts of meat. Some look real tasty, and some just stink up the joint. People, there's nothing wrong with eating whatever you like, but understand that in audit, given the crampness of the rooms and the number of team members, we're almost sitting on your lap. Don't try and funkify your lunch, get something that doesn't smell. I still remember going through some work paper and almost falling back on my chair because of some pungent smell. I look around thinking there was a gas leak, only to notice that it was because this guy opened his lunch. It took me an hour to recover.
2) Bring snacks from home, with no real lunch - There's the health freaks and the people watching their weight. They start the day with a couple eggs, and then just eat a bag of almonds throughout the day, with a cup of yogurt and a protein bar thrown in somewhere. Either that, or just a bag of carrots.
3) Eat out every day - Some people head out for some fresh air and grab a sandwich from a nearby deli, and some just go to the deli and sit down there for a "team lunch". A good time to get away from the client environment, and make small talk. If your clients are out in the suburbs, you can either go the client cafe if its a big office complex, or you'd have to drive to the nearby deli that's around 2 miles away. You just get sick and tired of the same food every single day, and it really gets to you at times. Heck, just for some variety, you'll do a google maps search just for "food". If you're in the city, you luck out since there are so many different options, and you can meet up with your friends who work for different companies. This is the best option, since it's a break from work and from your co-workers.
If it's busy season, and it's dinner time, there's always a squabble over dinner since everyone has different tastes. The associate always ends up ordering and picking up the food (rite of passage).
This is one of the few perks of public accounting, you get to eat different types of cuisines from a variety of restaurants. But when they mess up on their delivery and you're starving at 9 pm on a wednesday night, having not eaten for 9 hours, nobody is a happy camper.
As much as this is a funny question, it is a quirky part of any job so I figured I should touch on it.
One interesting thing about working with an insane number of people at a number of clients over the years is gaining an understanding of different lifestyles, cultures and personalities. Here's a breakdown of the type of lunches I see people get/buy -
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