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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Tax Season @ The Library = HELL



Tax season is the worst, I consider it right up there with election season.  But I know who at the library does love it, library management.  They are not the ones on the front lines fielding nonstop questions, which some can be considered to be borderline aggressive interrogations: "Do you have any tax forms?" "Why don't you have any?" "What's taking so long?" "Well, do you know when they're coming in?" "Why not??"

Management gets to avoid all the annoying once a year patrons while watching their PRECIOUS door count statistics go up.  I'm okay with dealing with these patrons, most of the time.  It's the self-righteous ones who pull the, "I'm a tax-paying citizen" card and get all up-in-arms when they don't get what they want.  The minute I see them turn, I do an internal eye-roll and tell myself, "here we go again."

I can manage to deflect their misguided anger by either agreeing with them: "Yeah, tell me about it, it's ridiculous!"  Or I give them the option to actually bitch to/at the right person: "Would you like me to find you the contact information for the IRS?"  And that shuts down their attack because they never call my bluff to actually take the time to contact the right department.  It is just too easy for them to take it out on the lowly library worker who tells them there aren't any forms and quite honestly, they don't pay me enough for that.

4 comments:

  1. Oh the joys of working the reference desk in a library!

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    1. The circ desk also gets daily bombarded with these questions. No one is safe!

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  2. So glad we aren't the only library dealing with late tax forms. It's my first tax season working in a library and I am surprised by all of these people stressing about their taxes before January is over!

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    1. Oh yeah, as public libraries go -- we're all in this together. I think Tax Season is also susceptible to the phenomenon we all know as Christmas Creep. The earliest inquiry about tax forms for me was the week after Christmas. Before we know it, people will be bugging us for tax forms before Thanksgiving, can't wait...

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