Your Taxes Pay These People's Salaries (unless you're from Canada or Australia)

I've spent this entire week in training. This is where I sit with my colleagues in a classroom and listen to lectures. Imagine sitting in a room for eight hours listening to people read--yes, read--the United States tax code (otherwise known as United States Code Title 26, Internal Revenue Code) out loud. Tax law. Eight hours. To pass my time, I've decided to grow a brain tumor.

I keep hoping my heart stops. When my heart stops, my pain stops. And then, there is peace.

I observe those around me. There are people in government service that you just don't see outside in private industry. I watch and learn; by this, I mean I watch the others and think, "Why are these people walking around without helmets on their head?" What a bunch of fuckin' putzes. I write about those that stand out...

The Questioner
This one woman repeatedly asks questions and makes comments that just don't seem to connect--with anything. She averages one question per 5 minutes, or approximately 96 questions or bizarre comments during a single day.

Let me try and illustrate what this woman does. Let's say the lecture is in the neighborhood of a balance due on a personal income tax return. Let's say it's $455, and this wasn't paid because the person died right as they wrote the check to send to the IRS. All right, a decedent case; you check the probate records and find the executor of the estate--oh, Shanika, you have a question?

"Yeah, what happens if the taxpayer was writing the check to pay the $455 with a red pen? Because let me tell you something, I know somebody who died once because they choked on a piece of raw chicken. How they were eating raw chicken in the first place, I don't know. Because don't you think she'd have died of Salmonella anyway, because you can get that from raw chicken? And what was odd was that she had a checkbook in her hand when she died. So...what about that? Do you see? I mean, what happens with that $455 and the Salmonella?"

And the instructors stand there and stare at her completely befuddled, and then attempt to answer her question as if she's a reasonable, intelligent human being. There is no such thing as a stupid question? Oh, I beg to differ. The instructors have started just letting her ramble on, and then answer her questions with, "Okay...So we're just going to go ahead and move on."

The Fucking Genius
Well now, this is the person that knows the answer--to every single question you could possibly think of. He puts in his two cents at every opportunity, because he obviously knows the answer. Obviously. Today, he was telling the group some wierd horseshit law about seizing and liquidating securities (stocks, bonds, poop, etc.) in Nevada, since states have different laws about certain asset seizures. And then he said, "I have a good understanding of this. My wife is a financial advisor--excuse me, I mean a certified financial advisor."

I immediately turned to my neighbor and wrote him out a prescription for Percodan. My parents are both pharmacists and my uncle is a doctor. Why not? Obviously, if his wife is a certified financial advisor and she took some finance courses, that makes him suddenly qualified to pontificate freely about securities and finance (things he knows nothing about). Therefore, I am qualified to write out prescriptions. I excused myself so I could wash up for surgery. I decided to remove my neighbor's tonsils to prove my medical expertise.

Obviously, this guy's wife taking a few finance courses and getting some horsecock frou-frou certification means more than my Goddamn masters degree in finance. Fuck.

The Government Lifer
This is the situation with many of the instructors, but one in particular stands out. He worked his way up through the ranks. He put himself through college and started a family while working up through public service. He works at the same office he started at almost 30 years ago. He seems to love it. This man takes his job very, very seriously.

If I spend another year at my job, I will probably eat a box of rat poison. He's been there 30 years. I wonder how people can spend so much time in such a slow-moving, boring environment. I can't even figure out how I'm going to make it to the end of next week. If I were him, and I woke up one day to see I'd spent 30 years of my LIFE working for the same agency in the same organizational division in the same city in the same office, I would cry. I would cry, and cry, and then quit my job and move on a kibbutz. I would sky-dive without a parachute. And then I'd probably do something drastic.