zhisou

I went to the tax office.  Head plugged-in to fifties tunes (see why here).  The huge hall of confusing signs and perplexing services would bamboozle the most plugged-in of number-crunching accountant types.  I took a couple of tickets from the automated queuing system thing, and sat down.

Long wait.  Numbers dripped by at an achingly slow pace.  The whiny beep indicating another desk free for a different queue.  Any queue but mine.  I plugged-out, didn’t want to seem not plugged-in to the whole tax game when my turn at the table came.  Wanted to be ready.  I organised my wad of papers, a brief flurry of nervousness when I thought I’d forgotten something.  I hadn’t, years of coping with my absent-minded sieve-like brain has taught me to cobble together Stuff I Might Need into enveloped bundles so that I only need grab the single envelope and know with confidence that I’ve got everything I need. And more.

Everything and more is the golden rule.  Don’t ever think you won’t need something, you always need everything.  And more.  That’s bureaucracy.

Eventually my number is called.  I smile and say nice things like “good morning” to make sure there’s no tension.  Not worth starting off on the wrong foot.  Not with tax-types.  They never know enough but can give you a serious bum steer if narked.  Never nark them, that’s my rule.  That and putting all the papers in an envelope, that’s the other rule (see above).

She wasn’t plugged-in anyway.  Didn’t know the answers – didn’t have, what I believe our Cockney cousins call, a scoobie.   She directed me Elsewhere.  When I got there, I stood about until a kindly man directed me to a kindly woman.   There we chatted and she sorted everything out.   Everything and more actually, because she spotted something extra she could do.  Added value.  Good stuff.  All sorted.  I left on a high and plugged-in again.  Buddy Holly “That’ll Be The Day“.

Buddy was right.

When I got home and clicked on the email confirming that everything was ship-shape, it turned out that nothing worked.  I cried a little, frustration bubbling to the surface and cracking my otherwise ice-cool outer edge.

I phoned the helpline.

A gruff man gruffly barked a few things at me without listening.  He’d Heard It All Before and had no need to listen.   When I eventually caught up with him and  he’d impatiently told me where to look, he slammed down the phone with a curt “You need to do it all again“.  I didn’t like his tone.  I told him so, though he’d long gone so the impact of my words may have been lessened.

I phoned back.  A nice man called Claudio said I needed to download something.  I told him I’d done that a couple of weeks ago.  He said that that was something else and emailed me some instructions.  I thanked him and followed the instructions.  Turns out that I’d done that a couple of weeks ago.  I phoned him back and told him.

Half an hour later I got an email confirming that it had all been set up wrongly.  I needed to do it all again.

I didn’t plug in this time.  I didn’t want to sully my 50s playlist by creating an association with the taxman.  There’s an AC Newman song that I can’t listen to without feeling myself sitting in traffic on the Connecticut Turnpike.  When I hear Morrissey’s “Hector” I’m transported to downtown Stamford.  I can see the slate grey of the office blocks, feel the growl of the engine of the huge 4×4 Mitsubishi I drove in those days.   I didn’t want to make a similar permanent psychological link to anything tax-like.

So I went in solo.  Naked.  Devoid of earphones.

Keeping the same cool and jolly exterior, I played a couple of trump cards and wangled my way into the back room.  There, in the unpainted scruffy offices, crammed full of boxes and data-entry staff, a gentle sexagenarian who smelled of cigarettes and chewing-gum led me through my tax return and a kind bearded chap sorted out the IT.

Fantastic.   Best service ever.  Who’d have thought it.  They did everything I needed for this year and even set me up for next.  Everything and more.  Hats off.

I plugged-in again, a bit of Bo Diddley now forever linked to jolly good service from the taxman.