Like Frasier, who was represented to be a fairly accomplished professional, were they good at their jobs as an accountant and a mailman or not?
I seem to remember Norm having been fired at least once (it was why he was painting Tom Skerrit’s house in that one later-seasons episode).
I remember one episode when Cliff was delivering mail along the corridor of an apartment building. After he passed, the residents all came out and swapped around the mail that was delivered incorrectly. There was also the fact that Norm gave up his career as an accountant to become a decorator… Not primae faciae evidence of incompetence in itself, but certainly indicating he was unhappy with his career.
I don’t recall exactly, but didn’t Cliff win several mailman awards? I’m sure that recurring Mailman supervisor guy gave him one at least once.
But Cliff also alluded once to stashing tons of mail rather than being arsed to deliver it.
I know Neuman of Seinfeld did this, are you sure you’re not conflating the two?
Rarely watched Seinfeld (less than a dozen episodes, tops), so I don’t think so.
The fact that no one had to walk further than across the hall proves that Cliff was an excellent mailman.
ba-da-bum.
I don’t know about being an accountant, but Norm was the KING of corporate hatchet-men.
FWIW, Norm had some practical accounting skills of a sort, as he was perpetually carrying a tab. Did he ever settle up, even partly?
And was Cliff any better, or was his attitude like “don’t worry, the check’s in the mail”?
In one episode, when Sam regained control of the bar, he forgave everyone’s outstanding tab (which wiped Norm’s slate clean.) There was also an episode, I believe, where Norm came into some money. He used the money to buy a boat (which pissed Sam off since Norm owed him so much money on his tab) but at the end of the episode Norm revealed he bought the boat for Sam. I imagine that would have gone against the tab, too.
There was a time when Norm set up in business as a painter/ decorator. He redecorated the bar, his fee being deducted from his tab.
Norm was at least an adequate accountant. He kept getting fired, but he also seemed to keep getting rehired, and he did find a bunch of dedutions Sam’s accountant had overlooked. Norm just hated being an accountant.
As for Cliff, no matter how good a postal carrier he may have been, he wasn’t as good as he thought he was.
IIRC that episode correctly the “deductions” turned to be mistakes, and would have gotten Sam in trouble if he claimed them. Sam took his taxes back to his original acct in the end.
In the series finale, Cliff boasted that he’d secured a VERY small promotion (to “head of division X, zone Y, area Z…”, or some such), and ‘only’ had to do extensive home improvements on his boss’s house. I took this to mean he wasn’t especially respected at work.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought Norm had only been an accountant for a short time early on, before being fired (for coming to the defense of Diane, whom his boss had made a pass at) – can someone confirm/correct this?
And he’d been running that tab for a long time. The early entries list him as 'That skinny guy at the end of the bar."
That was a brilliant episode. Eventually he tired of being the hatchet man, so he called his boss to resign the position. The boss just screamed and hung up when he realized who was on the phone (he assumed that he was being fired).
Cliff was at least a good-enough postal carrier to sweep the Jeopardy! board in these categories:
CIVIL SERVANTS
STAMPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
MOTHERS AND SONS
BEER
BAR TRIVIA
CELIBACY
I recall an episode where Norm worked in a beer brewery as taster. It was the only job he really liked and was really good at.
You have to ask yourself if what they were doing was even possible. I say that it is based on real world examples. I have known two raging alcoholics that pulled this stuff off at least well enough. Both were engineers. One lives is the USVI and the other in New Orleans. The one in New Orleans went to a nice bar (that I worked at) every single second that he was not sleeping or working. He ran up a $280,000 bar tab over ten years but he was single and already owned his home so that isn’t much more than paying for a child’s college tuition. The one in the USVI was also single and even more of a fall-down drunk. I don’t know how much he made but every time I ran into him, he had a $100+ bar tab for himself and I was told that he did that every night.
Boston is an expensive area so accountants make good change in general especially in the financial district where Norm probably worked. Let’s say he had 15K in bar tabs a year. That could be pulled off if other things were sacrificed. Some people can maintain their jobs if they split reality into two parts and don’t get bad hangovers.