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Good Luck With That One
Mar. 2nd, 2023 08:25 amWhen I wake up, I’m almost always in a jolly mood.
But then I think about the world.
This morning, it only took around five minutes to start feeling anxious.
###
The Ukraine War, as it's being fought now, is unwinnable. The West wins it when Putin drops dead (which has to happen sooner or later.) Russia wins it when the U.S. realizes they'd get a better return on their investment by setting fire to $130 billion in the Washington Mall and selling the resulting video to pay-per-view.
I feel for the individuals whose lives have been ruined by various politicians' delusions of manifest destiny—and that includes all of us.
###
And then there’s ChatGPT. Maybe that’s the personal edge to my anxiety: ChatGPT has the potential to make my remunerative gigs obsolete, although I’d guess that potential is still a good three years off from being realized, and in three years, a lot of other things can change.
But I think the Japanese have the right idea.
In 2022, there were only 800,000 births in the entire nation of Japan.
When you consider that the Japanese population is 126 million, that is a remarkable number.
Of course, one could say that what ChatGPT will do for writing, calculators did for solving math problems decades ago. There was great consternation in the ranks when calculators became commonplace, too. I remember it well! (I did high school calculus with a slide rule!)
###
Anyway…
Only one genuinely obnoxious client yesterday.
This is a guy whose 2022 return I’d done last week who returned to have his 2021 return amended because he forgot to put in for New York State’s tax credit in 2021.
He'd done the 2021 return himself.
Generally, we don’t amend returns that weren’t initially prepared by TaxBwana in the first place.
The process is just too laborious. It involves recreating the original tax return for our database by reentering every one of the original tax documents and then comparing that to the client’s unamended return—and then, if the numbers are off, you have to go back over what you’ve entered and try to recreate the client’s actual mistakes!
Once you’ve done that, you tackle the amendment.
The whole thing takes upwards of an hour and a half—longer in this client’s case because he was one of those assholes who never rolled over an IRA and thus had thirteen 1099-R statements from 2021 for me to enter.
But the appointment bookers made a mistake and gave him an appointment.
So, I started the work.
The entire time I was entering his forms, the guy kept sighing dramatically and drumming his fingers against the table and looking at his watch. “Look,” he told me. “I gotta go home and let the dog out to pee—”
I clucked sympathetically and nodded my head. “Too bad you scheduled this appointment on a day you had to let the dog out to pee! How expensive is your carpet anyway?”
“No offense, but can’t Marty do this?”
Marty is our site coordinator.
I sighed and shook my head. “Too bad you didn’t get Marty. Marty is so good that he just has to look at a tax return, and instantly it’s done! It’s an amazing superpower. Please keep that to yourself, though. We wouldn’t want it to get out because then people wouldn’t sign up to get their taxes done at any site but ours, and that would hurt all those other tax preparers’ feelings.”
Marty blushed bright red, and everyone else in the room burst into laughter.
Except my client. Who looked around suspiciously: Wait! Did someone make a joke?
“Well?” he demanded. “Can Marty do it?”
“’ Fraid not,” I said.
“Well, I think I’m gonna have to leave—”
Flo, our administrative assistant, booked him a return appointment for March 8th.
But when I was leaving the shopping mall where TaxBwana has set up its camp an hour later at 2:00 pm, guess who I saw? Trudging back to the TaxBwana site?
“I was in the neighborhood, so I figured someone could finish it up now—” he told me with a big ingratiating grin.
Good luck with that one, I thought.
But then I think about the world.
This morning, it only took around five minutes to start feeling anxious.
###
The Ukraine War, as it's being fought now, is unwinnable. The West wins it when Putin drops dead (which has to happen sooner or later.) Russia wins it when the U.S. realizes they'd get a better return on their investment by setting fire to $130 billion in the Washington Mall and selling the resulting video to pay-per-view.
I feel for the individuals whose lives have been ruined by various politicians' delusions of manifest destiny—and that includes all of us.
###
And then there’s ChatGPT. Maybe that’s the personal edge to my anxiety: ChatGPT has the potential to make my remunerative gigs obsolete, although I’d guess that potential is still a good three years off from being realized, and in three years, a lot of other things can change.
But I think the Japanese have the right idea.
In 2022, there were only 800,000 births in the entire nation of Japan.
When you consider that the Japanese population is 126 million, that is a remarkable number.
Of course, one could say that what ChatGPT will do for writing, calculators did for solving math problems decades ago. There was great consternation in the ranks when calculators became commonplace, too. I remember it well! (I did high school calculus with a slide rule!)
###
Anyway…
Only one genuinely obnoxious client yesterday.
This is a guy whose 2022 return I’d done last week who returned to have his 2021 return amended because he forgot to put in for New York State’s tax credit in 2021.
He'd done the 2021 return himself.
Generally, we don’t amend returns that weren’t initially prepared by TaxBwana in the first place.
The process is just too laborious. It involves recreating the original tax return for our database by reentering every one of the original tax documents and then comparing that to the client’s unamended return—and then, if the numbers are off, you have to go back over what you’ve entered and try to recreate the client’s actual mistakes!
Once you’ve done that, you tackle the amendment.
The whole thing takes upwards of an hour and a half—longer in this client’s case because he was one of those assholes who never rolled over an IRA and thus had thirteen 1099-R statements from 2021 for me to enter.
But the appointment bookers made a mistake and gave him an appointment.
So, I started the work.
The entire time I was entering his forms, the guy kept sighing dramatically and drumming his fingers against the table and looking at his watch. “Look,” he told me. “I gotta go home and let the dog out to pee—”
I clucked sympathetically and nodded my head. “Too bad you scheduled this appointment on a day you had to let the dog out to pee! How expensive is your carpet anyway?”
“No offense, but can’t Marty do this?”
Marty is our site coordinator.
I sighed and shook my head. “Too bad you didn’t get Marty. Marty is so good that he just has to look at a tax return, and instantly it’s done! It’s an amazing superpower. Please keep that to yourself, though. We wouldn’t want it to get out because then people wouldn’t sign up to get their taxes done at any site but ours, and that would hurt all those other tax preparers’ feelings.”
Marty blushed bright red, and everyone else in the room burst into laughter.
Except my client. Who looked around suspiciously: Wait! Did someone make a joke?
“Well?” he demanded. “Can Marty do it?”
“’ Fraid not,” I said.
“Well, I think I’m gonna have to leave—”
Flo, our administrative assistant, booked him a return appointment for March 8th.
But when I was leaving the shopping mall where TaxBwana has set up its camp an hour later at 2:00 pm, guess who I saw? Trudging back to the TaxBwana site?
“I was in the neighborhood, so I figured someone could finish it up now—” he told me with a big ingratiating grin.
Good luck with that one, I thought.
