trump with his lousy covid policies of mismanagement and pretending it did not exist

destroyed the service industry (no one is ever in the office anymore)

and the cost of those services are a lot more expensive

for example

I go to sign/pick up and pay for my taxes.

In the past (small office) you’d meet with your accountant, he’d go over the returns with you...so that’s what I expected this time.

But no. They’ve been bought out/merged by a slightly bigger firm, looks like a few more employees now, still not huge though.\

My appointment is 10:30

I arrive, out of standard courtesy, at 10:20

While I’m sitting there waiting, after a couple minutes the receptionist takes a call, and upon hanging up, tells me “Allie is running late she’ll be here in 15 minutes, but well.... you were early anyway”, as though being early is a bad thing, and makes it ok for someone else to be late.

(I think, whoTF is “Allie”? But I say nothing)

At 11:05 (45 minutes after I arrived) a young woman in sweat pants/shirt and flip flops, looking frazzled and messy, with hair flying, comes running through the door, hard to tell her exact age with a mask, but definitely in her 20s. In front of her is running a child approximately 4 years old. Presumably her child, that she brought to work with her.

I’m sorry, did I interrupt your morning plans and inconvenience you with the appointment that I made a week ago?

She goes into the back of the office with the kid, and 2 minutes later comes out “ Hi I’m Allie, I’ll be ____ing your taxes, come with me to the office”
(Where the “____ing” is a verb that I can’t remember. Finishing? Issuing? Completing? Can’t remember.)

I follow her into an office where she plunks down 4 forms (Feds, state, local, CPA bill) on the table for me to sign and asks me for a check. I sign the forms and give her a check.

I ask her what her job is, she responds, but I can’t remember, but I could swear she said something like “tax forms getter” (not kidding) or something similarly implying like “helper clerk”.

The entire transaction with her took 23 seconds.

She never even apologized for being late.

I WAITED 45 MINUTES (while multiple other employees walked past me and around the offices, and saw me sitting there like a schmuck for almost an hour), for a “form getter” to arrive late and say “sign here, here, and here, now give me a check”.

Nobody else could do that, in almost an hour.

I think the degree of “accommodate work life balance” and combined with “work from home” that I see more commonly now has become unacceptable these days.

There is no such thing as customer service anymore.

And the bill for the tax service has almost doubled since last year it’s now $550 dollars.

trump also set back climate management by four years but that is a whole nother story

mk5000

The fact that there is such a dramatic expansion of power shutoffs as a strategy to stop wildfires is a sign of PG&E's failure and mismanagement when it comes to trimming the trees and taking care of the grid.--Mark Toney