Clashing Symbols

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This time of year, just remember that T-H-E I-R-S spells "theirs".

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I worked at a regional service center of the IRS in Austin, Texas for a few years. They had a twenty-hour shift well-suited for someone who was a student, my situation when I was first hired. In many ways it was a good place to work for the slacker I was for much of my time employed there.

The work was not too taxing (no pun intended), but to paraphrase Super Chicken, "You knew the job was tedious when you took it, Fred". I had a coworker there named Fred. He was heavyset, wore glasses, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much coffee and soda. Those were all common traits of the people working there. For all I know he may still be working there.

Like agricultural work, this was seasonal, but instead of fruits or vegetables, we picked pockets. Getting another job during the "off season" was not easy because the IRS paid better than other employers, and any other place didn't want to hire somebody only to have them leave a few months later to go back to their government job.

Over the years I worked different shifts: 6:00pm to 10:00pm, 5:00pm to 1:30am, 8:00am to 4:30pm, and 3:15pm to 11:45pm. That last shift was based on the availability of computing power. We updated records online, but those same computers were used for batch processing from 6:30pm to 6:30am, when our day shift counterparts began their workday. The second shift input data for the first few hours then prepared paperwork for the next day's input. That shift started when most day shifts still had another seventy-five minutes. People on that second shift were an unkempt bunch, many arriving in t-shirts, cut-offs, and sandals after spending the early afternoon at the lake. People on the day shift would always look askance at us.

Many there were particular about their work area, like the character of Milton in the movie Office Space. One morning during a season on the day shift, I overheard somebody complaining that her adding machine was moved by the night shift worker who used that desk. The adding machine was not on the other side of the desk; it was a few inches from its usual location.

"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."
Benjamin Franklin

Everyone submits tax forms. Back then there was no electronic filing. The Austin center processed the paper forms from everyone in a five state area; Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Strange information was noticed simply because it was strange and we needed relief from the tedium. Someone listed a dependent who was named LaTrina. An exotic dancer included in her itemized deductions the employee business expenses of snakes and mice to feed them.

People who worked there did all sorts of things to keep themselves amused. Two of my coworkers on the night shift would sing slave songs while they worked. I would try to identify the tunes playing on the Muzak.

In the job I had on the shift that started at 3:15pm, we were allowed to phone people if there was some question that might be cleared up easily. Those people were often surprised a government employee was working that late. We usually explained that ours was not the usual 9-to-5 shift. When I contacted one woman about a tax return that had a number of mistakes, she confided to me that their accountant had been fired for going out to his car to drink during his workday (like some of my coworkers). During another phone call, I heard someone in the background, presumably the young man's mother, ask who that was on the phone. When he told her it was the IRS, she said, "IRS don't call you on the phone. IRS write you a letter."

Yes, the IRS writes many letters. For one of my jobs there were two three-inch binders filled with form letters. You would put in the code number for the letter and data to fill in the blanks. Some people would distill all the possible form letters down to a few choices, writing the needed information on some 3x5 index cards. That may be why people get letters from the IRS that seem to make no sense.

I learned that if you wanted to get some thorny problem resolved in that big bureaucracy, you went to someone who'd worked there for years. That person would phone a friend in some other department, check on the current procedure, then get the paper shuffled off in the right direction. We didn't have a system of pneumatic tubes or Fresnel lenses in front of our computer terminals, but in many other ways that place resembled the government offices in Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil.

One job involved reconciling information on tax forms with the data entered into the computers from those forms. The resolution might be a code indicating the computer's numbers were correct, thus generating a form letter notifying the person of an error on their tax return. In other cases it was an error in the data entry. We would sign out a box of forms and the computer printout for them, mark them up, then sign them back in. This was an iterative process. If things didn't match the next time through, we'd get the forms back with a new printout. We could see on the checkout sheet who'd worked on those forms earlier. Everyone avoided anything previously touched by a certain coworker. I found out that when the job function was first created, managers were told that people with high ratings would be transferred into the new department. She had received very high ratings not because her work was good, but because it was so poor that her manager wanted to get rid of her. For all I know she may still be working there.

Working for the IRS was impetus for me to go back to college and get a degree. I feared my brain would turn into tapioca if I continued to shuffle papers for the government. In the end, that was the best thing about working there.