Microwaved Tater Tots Drenched In Ketchup

[mallorys_camera]

My heart breaks for Sarah, a country girl in her mid-20s, single mother of a two-year-old she cannot control, whose sole joy in life is that jumbo-sized styrofoam container of microwaved Tater Tots drenched with ketchup that she buys at the Arco Quik-Serve every morning.

But she should not be doing tax returns.

I was horrified watching her do one over the weekend. Her stained pink top was riding up, and her sweat pants were sagging so you could see the crack of her ass as she sat there playing Maybe This Will Work at the computer.

The client was too busy trying to push through a questionable Head of Household filing status through to notice, and anyway, he had his own problems with tater tots or maybe with Pabst Blue Ribbon six-packs. His red-rimmed eyes were set in a head that was probably normal-sized but perched atop his vast bulk made him look microcephalic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know—it's Politically Incorrect to comment on people's weight. But I see what I see. And those jumbo-sized styrofoam containers of microwaved Tater Tots drenched with ketchup are a problem.

Anyway. I had been intimidated by the [hideous, soulless corporation's] tax preparation software, but after watching Sarah, I thought, There are no standards here, and thus I completed my first two returns as a tax professional yesterday.

One of my first two clients was Married Filing Separately. Back when I was an altruistic TaxBwana, I would have begged him to use a different filing status because MFS is absolutely the worst. It's totally worth it to make nice with that spouse you hate and want to divorce just so you can file jointly.

But now that I'm a predatory tax preparer circling the rubes so I can push product on them, I no longer offer advice. I just smile and input the boxes.

I cannot believe what people are willing to pay for this service. $170 per form! For a task that would literally take them 20 minutes in a library to do on their own. It isn't hard! I mean, we're not talking about complicated tax situations here; we're talking a single W2.

Survival is a rough, rough game. I'm just grateful I don't like tater tots.

Comments

[smokingboot]

I remember my visit to the West Coast last century, where LA residents seemedsplit into worryingly colour coded types;

Ordinary shaped but definitely poor people = black
Muscular shorter beach surfers= latino/as
Extremely well padded = white

Of course these were just generic groupings but it was crazy to see them recur, honestly, LA was like a weird dream. I did not see one single underweight person of any class or colour. Not one. And I guess that's a good thing, it means no-one is going hungry, but yeah. There's a point when you have to rethink the tater tots.

[mallorys_camera]

I get that comfort eating that way is a coping mechanism when you're facing as much as Sarah is facing—-poverty, single-parenting with no backup, etc, etc, etc. And I feel badly for Sarah, I really do. But, man. She is trapping herself in a wheel from which there's no escape.

Multiply this by 150 million, and you have a picture of why America is the way it is right now.