Friday, February 21, 2025

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Good morning! Day 192 (yes, I know—bad math yesterday when I said it was Day 190!). Anyone want me to do their taxes? 🤣

Speaking of taxes, the intensity of tax season has officially reached the “organized chaos” stage. Let me paint you a picture of what that looks like.

We operate out of the basement of a local bank—no windows, just the soft hum of fluorescent lights and a Bose speaker to keep people from over-listening or to relax a nervous or bored client.

Our team of volunteers consists of nine tax counselors: six preparers, three reviewers, and one formidable greeter. Our greeter, a former schoolteacher in her 80s, runs the check-in desk. She has a box of #2 pencil and a well worn pink pearl eraser to help her mange the process of checking people in. She assigns clients to a counselor, keeps future appointments in order, deals with walk-ins, and somehow still finds time to sneak in a few pages of her book. If anyone tries to cut the line or disrupt the system, she swiftly reminds them who’s in charge. Once a teacher, always a teacher.

The process itself is a well-oiled machine—or at least we like to think so. A tax return is prepared, reviewed, corrected (if necessary), printed, and then we move on to the next. We aim to complete each return in about two hours, but the reality is far less predictable. Some clients are in and out quickly, while others arrive with a shoebox full of unopened tax documents and a look of pure panic.

Because our service is free, we can’t turn anyone away based on income, which means we get folks earning over $100K who just don’t want to pay for this service. Some of these higher income earners can often take three hours, and when too many of them show up at once, our whole system grinds to a halt.

By 10:00 AM—just one hour into our day—our greeter starts to struggle to keep track of everything. Between checking people in, scheduling appointments, managing walk-ins, and flipping pages of her novel, it’s a lot for her to manage. If someone tries to interrupt or cut ahead, the teacher voice comes out. Loud. Direct. Undeniable. No one gets past her without approval.

This whirlwind continues until 2:00 PM. If all goes according to plan, each preparer completes about six returns a day. Some handle more, some less, depending on complexity. But no matter what, we have to wrap up by 4:00 PM when the bank closes. Usually, we get the last client out by 3:45 PM, but on rare occasions, when we don’t, those unlucky clients have to come back another day. On a typical day, we process 36-40 tax returns, and by the end of the season, we’ll have filed over 700.

Yesterday was one of those “strap-in-and-hold-on” kind of days. We hit our max and processed 39 returns. I prepared six and reviewed four returns, bouncing between roles as needed.

By the end of the day, I could barely string a sentence together. I mentioned that I had haven trouble with the multi-syllable words. Yesterday I was having trouble with one syllable words. I tried to slow my speech down even more, but it just didn’t work for me. I apologized at one point for my incoherent speech and just moved on.

On the bright side, I made it through the entire day without having to talk about my ALS, which helped me stay focused and emotionally steady. I was thankful for that.

We finally shut down at 3:50 PM, and I trudged out to my car, absolutely drained. When I pulled into the driveway, Cindy must have taken one look at me and decided I was in no shape to carry anything. She rushed out, grabbed all my stuff, and ushered me inside. That gave me just enough strength to make a pit stop at the garage fridge for a beer before collapsing onto the couch, where I stayed for most of the evening.

And that was just another day in the tax trenches and coming home and feeling good about the day’s accomplishments.

No plans today…more rest and maybe I’ll have enough energy to shower. It’s been since Tuesday.

Have a great day.

Love you guys!❤️