Saturday, March 14, 2009

'Cuz I'm The Tax Man'

The above picture shows my interpretation of the job description of a tax man. For every two cows they find you have, they take one cow and give it to Uncle Sam, so that he can give your cow to someone else.

As some of you may know, I recently found out that my job in the auditing field was slated for elimination due to budget cuts. I got the call yesterday telling me that my transfer into revenue recovery was approved. Revenue recovery, by the way, is what the tax man's line of work is officially called probably because "bloodletting" wouldn't be politically correct.

To this point I have gotten by without having to succumb to working as a tax man, which I consider an abhorrent waste of flesh. I think Mark Twain expressed my sentiment exactly:


"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin." -- Mark Twain

If someone had told me 20 years ago that I would end up a tax man, I would have disagreed insisting that it didn't meet my criteria for gainful employment; that it not be (1) illegal, (2) immoral, or (3) disgusting. I would have told them that I would rather live under a bridge with trolls, eat out of garbage cans, and end up dying from heat stroke. I guess the idealism of youth has been replaced by cold hard reality; times are tough, and a girl's gotta make a living, right? Or maybe I'm not thinking things through? What about dream weaving a life that I can be proud of?

At any rate, welcome, Susan, to the machine.