Tax Season Newbie

Barter Works Too

2011-02-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

The Boss will take just about anything in exchange for tax preparation. In these few short months I've witnessed him being paid in pickles, salsa, vodka, chips and cheesecake. Today he was paid in sandwiches. We all benefited from this one though. The local sandwich shop that we keep the books for paid off this month in sandwiches for all four of us. Having a giant salty sub instead of my usual cup of yogurt for lunch was heavenly!

Still Sitting Here

2011-01-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

Busy day in the old office today. I was met at the door by the 9 AM by the first squirrel. He was clearly annoyed that The Boss wasn’t in yet. So was I. The Boss showed up about ten after, which is fantastic for him.

The next three hours was a constant stream of scheduled squirrels, drop in’s and phone calls. It was crazy.

I had nothing to do.

Well not exactly nothing. I answered the phone. I scanned stuff. I shredded stuff. I smiled and offered coffee. Nobody wanted coffee.

I am really anxious to do my first return. Scared shitless might be a better phrase, but you get the idea. I am making such little money here that the prospect of making a commission on a return is making me drool.

I know it’s going to happen sooner or later. Part II has already done a return. She couldn’t finish it, but she’s getting the credit for it. I can TOTALLY do half a return. Bring it on!

I just scheduled another return for Part II next week. It’s one I could handle, but the client can’t come in when I’m here. Nerts! Hopefully Part II will remember this and throw one my way soon.

Nothing Doing

2011-01-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

I have been effing bored out of mind at this job for weeks now. BORED.

Two days ago The Boss gave me a "giant project". It involved scanning. Lots and lots of scanning. An entire year's worth of bank statments for some barber. And then every receipt for every little comb, twenty-four dollar towel, roll of TP and mophead he ever bought in 2002. Even the register tape was in there with everything else but was only lists of numbers that weren't even dated. BORING.

This morning I found a pile of documents on my desk with a post-it saying, "Please open a file and enter what you can." It was documents for some other dude's year return from last year. It had some basic things in it that I could deal with and then a ton of crap I had no idea what to do with. I called Part II over and she was equally stymied. Online IRS and the giant tax guide are no help. Truly, I have nowhere to turn to get the answers to these questions. Hours later The Boss rolled into the office and stayed for a grand total of seven minutes. I kid you not. I didn't even have time to bring up return. So here I sit with an incomplete job and no way to continue on with it. BORING TIMES TWO.

The phone just rang and I got so excited for something to do. It was just the printer saying that our new business cards were done and she was going to drop them off.

It's something to look forward to at least.

I know that soon, very soon, we'll be mind-strangling busy. But waiting for those days to start is such a drag!

The Day I called 648 people

2011-01-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Boss had a fabulous idea. Combine all of his contact lists (there were three of them) into one big list. When that was done, we could send out one mass email about using our office to get their taxes done.

I got right on combining all three lists. That wasn't a big deal and made a list of around 1100 contacts. Then Part II went through the list and found the duplicates which put it down to around 900. When we sorted it out by who had an email address it only yielded about 225 contacts. That left a sizable number of people not being contacted.

"You can just call the other ones and leave a message," The Boss suggested with a breezy wave of the hand.

Part II looked horrified. "There's no way I'm calling 700 people!"

"Me either!" I piped in, riding on her bravery.

The Boss never looked up. "Yeah, well maybe we can find one of those programs that sends a recorded message."

Five minutes later he had found a place that sent out your message for three and a half cents a successful call. You don't even have to do the math to figure out that's much cheaper than making me hand dial 700 people.

The next day Part II set up the account. I wrote the script for the message and sent a test message to see how it worked. It was all fairly easy. When it came time to record the real message, Part II and The Boss decided I should be the one to say it, so I did.

In the next half hour, my message successfully called 648 people, talking to real people and leaving messages on machines and voice mail.

The Boss checked his phone. "I just got a text from a buddy of mine. He wants to know who's the broad who just called him from here."

I wonder how "Phone Broad" looks on a resumé?

First Evidence

2010-12-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

So you need more proof that I am sitting on a throne of lies otherwise known as my desk chair. Well how about this tidbit. You know that very first official document you get at any new job? The W4? The Boss handed me a W4 on my first day and I immediatly started to panic. I've had lots of jobs and I've never known how to fill this damn thing out. How many deductions? What is this worksheet? Will I look like a total loser if I take the time read it all over and actually fill out the worksheet?

My guess was yes. I will look like a poser and I am already on shaky ground. So I filled it out quick (have NO clue how many deductions I put down. Eleven?) and gave it right back. Now I'm sure he looked it over and if I REALLY screwed it up he would have pointed it out. I would have a made a cutesy joke and blown it off. But he would've known and I wouldv'e have known that he knew and it all would have been tense, for me at least.

He didn't say a thing. So I guess I did it right. Or passable. Doesn't matter. I'm still here. One week until tax time starts!

Pained Squirrel

2010-12-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

The Boss is out of the office quite a bit. He rolls in late. He takes off for meetings and lunch. In general, he's just not around much right now. Not that there's a lot to do, right now. Inevitability when he's out of the office, a squirrel or two shows up looking for him. Mostly they have stuff they need to drop off. That I can handle. I can also pretty efficiently take a message that they need him to call them back. I'm terrific at that.

Today a squirrel stumbled in not looking so great. "Where's the boss?", he asked in a shaken up voice.

"Out with a client", I cutely smiled. "Can I help you?" (This is the most dangerous of all sentences I can utter, because, as you know, I'm pretty helpless.)

"I was in yesterday and he gave me a list of things that he needed me to get together. But I lost it and I can't remember what was on it."

"What kinds of things?", Part II asked from across the room.

"Account numbers and documents... I don't know. It's all causing me pain!"

Quite a thing to claim! To be fair, he did look like he was in actual pain.

"Well how about I take your name and number. He'll give you a call when he comes in."

The Squirrel nodded, gave me his infomation and left the door mumbling, "I just don't know where that list went...".

The Boss was pretty unaffected by this story when he came in.

"Pain, huh? Just getting me his bank account numbers? What's going to happen when he sees the bill?"

Nesting

2010-12-20T17:53:00.000-08:00

The person who used to sit at my desk left a lot of shit behind. I spent the first week just working around the cup of mostly dried up pens, the plastic canvas cow box full of business cards and dried up rubber bands, the weird scribbled up post-its, the grubby paperclip cup with only one clip. On my sixth day of work, I threw it all out. Just cleared the deck. It felt so good just to toss it all. It was right up there with putting a picture of my cat on my wallpaper and making my Firefox Persona have blinking Christmas lights. I was making this space my own.

But it wasn't my own. There was a problem.

Check out the layout.

Are you seeing my problem? Anytime one of the other three of them wanted coffee or cocoa or hot water, they were all up in my mug. Invading my space. And here's news: When that Keurig is refilling I can't hear a damn thing and that's when they want to have chit chat about the weather.

The day of the scanner test ended with the scanner getting moved in order to reach an outlet. So then it looked like this:

At first you might not see this as a big deal. Just a juxtaposition of the now fully functional non-magical scanner and the coffee situation. But what I cannot create for you is how the power cord to the coffee maker practically had to go across my lap. Or how over the course of the day the whole coffee area kept creeping closer and closer to me. It was spreading like syrup.

That afternoon after work, I took my kiddos back to the office and loaded up the two ancient monitors, the dusty keyboard and the pile of toner cartridges into my van and took them to the recycling place. My time. My dime. Completely worth it for what was happening next.

The next morning, I set about rearranging the room. Part II helped which made things so much easier. She could have easily just sat there and watched me suffer. No one is ever up in her mug over in her corner.

In short order we had the room rearranged to this:

Notice the wide open area to my right. It's quite heavenly.

I should have filled in the big green circle in the corner is the huge plant. It's happier now too. It has it's own little room right by the window!

My actual desk doesn't have drawers, so I claimed one on the coffee desk. Chuck full of my stuff that I will actually take with me when this job is over.

That's how I roll.

First Things First

2010-12-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

I've been working in the office for two weeks now. I have a brand new computer with my own work email address. I'm not so fond of Outlook but I'm hoping that we can find a way to be friends. I'll admit that I'm prejudice against things that are ugly. Outlook is not pretty to behold.

The Boss installed Quickbooks. It didn't work at first and he had to fight with it. Then he installed stamps.com. It also put up a fight. He wanted me to listen to some tutorials on the tax software but I couldn't hear anything because there was no audio drive installed yet. More time working on that. He wanted me to study tax concepts with a program called Fastax. It worked on the first day, wouldn't open on the second. More Boss vs. computer followed.

So basically I spent my first few days at work watching him fight with my computer. While that happened I tried to find ways to keep busy.

I went through the magazine basket and tossed everything in it older than 2008 in recycling. That ended up being everything in the basket. New assignment: Get fresh magazines for the basket.
In the spare desk, I found a drawer that only held binder clips. There was another drawer that was mostly binder clips in my desk. Then I found a basket that was filled to the brim with binder clips. They're all together now in the spare desk. I'm a bit concerned that the combined mass of all those binder clips just might be producing their own gravity.
I found Christmas decorations and put them up.
I watered the plants. Again.
I drank a bunch of hot cocoa.

Finally, I had a fully functioning computer system with all of the programs I could ever need working in perfect harmony.

Last Wednesday The Boss gave me a stack of pages to scan. I hadn't touched the scanner yet and had literally no idea what to do with these pages. But the way he put them down and then walked away, I could tell that this was some kind of test. Could I possibly handle something as trivial as scanning without needing help?

There was a problem right away.

"Is this a magical scanner?", I asked in my most sincere voice.

"What?"

"Well it's not plugged into anything. Not the computer. Not even a power source."

That proceeded with a lot of grumbling and rooting through a box of various cords in order to get it hooked up. Then he loaded a program called Vuescan. You guessed it. It's didn't work. About an hour later I got those documents scanned, all by myself.

That's right. I passed the test.