We are a tax office. We offer a debit card that your taxes can be loaded to. A client comes in requesting one of those cards. Sure, easy; I just need an ID. I get the card issued to the client.

Client: “You know, I love the idea of these cards. I can just… spend money off of them, and then it’s paid off when my taxes come in.”

Me: “Uh… I think you misunderstood. That’s a prepaid debit card — basically a free bank account with [Bank]. You can have your payroll loaded to it, and you can have your refund loaded to it, but right now, it’s empty and there’s no money on it.”

Client: “But… I can spend the money, right? Put it negative and then get it topped off by my refund?”

Me: “No. Those are prepaid cards. They do not go negative. It’s not a credit card.”

Client: “…Then why would I bother getting one in the first place?”

Me: “…I don’t know. You tell me why you bothered getting it in the first place.”

She threw the card in my face and stormed out. I shredded the card after.

Related:
This Is Why We’re In A Recession, Part 114
This Is Why We’re In A Recession, Part 113
This Is Why We’re In A Recession, Part 112
This Is Why We’re In A Recession, Part 111
This Is Why We’re In A Recession, Part 110

I work in a tax preparation office. One day when I’m scheduled to come in, I see that all four desks are occupied and all four computers are in use.

This isn’t a huge deal because I brought a book, so I go sit in the corner and read. It’s not like there’s anything I can do without clients, and no clients are in.

A client comes in. We check the schedule, and I’m told that the client is scheduled with me. No one else has any clients.

I ask each of my coworkers if I can use their desk and take a client. They each reply that they are busy with something and I cannot use their desk. I don’t see any clients anywhere. They could be doing drop-offs or something? But if so, good customer service says a client physically in the office needs to be seen to in a reasonable amount of time.

They tell me to use the server computer in the back. I try it. The tax software is not installed on the server computer in the back.

I go around the office asking again. I tell them that the server in the back is not usable. They don’t believe me and insist again that I use it. Once more, it does not work.

Finally, I convince one of them to go back to check the server in the back. I sit at my coworker’s desk, log out of the computer, log back in as me, and have the client sit with me. My coworker gets back, upset that I didn’t follow her into the back.

If I was clever I would have said something like, “Not my problem. You can use the computer in the back to work. I’ve got a client,” but I just shrug and keep working on the client until we are done.

After the client leaves, the coworker yells at me a bit and makes me promise never to do that again. Fortunately, one of the other workers leaves before the next client comes in, so there is finally a free desk.

I’m a paid tax preparer for a retail tax chain.

One day, I work for a client who is very, very drunk. He falls asleep at my desk during the tax interview. He stinks of alcohol — that sour, bitter scent of someone who’s been drinking a lot for a long time — and snores loudly like he might choke to death at any second from alcohol-induced apnea.

He’s got three years of W2s, but he filed with us last time he filed, and he has no children that he claims. It’s a very simple return for a first-year like me.

I enter his information and wake him up long enough to sign and pay — he wants his fees to come out of his refund — and then send him home.

He calls back the next day, very angry.

Client: “Why didn’t you do my taxes?!”

Me: “We… did your taxes.”

Client: “I don’t remember you doing my taxes!”

Me: “You were asleep.”

Client: “Well, why the h*** did you do my taxes while I was sleeping?!”

I don’t really have a good answer for that. I mostly did it because I felt like if I rejected him, it would become a bigger problem. He was large and had an angry and suspicious demeanor for the handful of minutes he was awake. So, I redirect it.

Me: “Do you want to know how much you’re getting back?”

Client: *Flatly* “How much?”

I tell him the number for the three years put together, federal plus state.

Client: *Cheerfully* “Well, d***, I need to get drunk before doing my taxes more often!”

He then hung up abruptly.

I, meanwhile, made a note in his file to never assign him to me again.

When I graduated college with an accounting degree, I joined my father in his tax office. One tax season in the old paper file days, he prepared a return for a young couple, just the two of them with no dependents. A super simple tax return.

As I was coming back from lunch, I passed the couple, who had just picked up their return and were sitting in their car looking it over. For some reason, I thought something is up from the way they were talking about the returns. They followed me into the office as they were parked around the corner. My father came out of his office to see what they wanted.

Customer: “We feel you charged us too much for the return. It couldn’t have taken but five minutes to work it.”

My father’s fees were less than the local national office.

Father: “So, how much do you think it’s worth?”

Customer: “No more than half of what we already paid you.”

Father: “Okay. Let me take care of it.”

My father asked to see the package of federal, state, and client copies they had that they had paid for.

He took each copy out of the envelopes and laid them flat on the desk. Then, he peeled the tax return forms off of each return and laid them aside. He then tore up each copy of the returns!

Customer: “Those are our returns. We paid for them!”

My father handed her the check they had used to pay with.

Father: “They are mine now. Get out of my office and never come back. You will not dictate my fees and pretend to know how long it takes to prepare a tax return.”

He turned around and went back into his office. Way to go, Dad!

I worked for a tax preparation office. [Owner] owned four offices. I was typically located in the smallest office, but occasionally, I was placed in a bigger office when they were short-handed.

One such short-handing was rather unusual in nature. [Manager] ran the largest of [Owner]’s offices.

One day, he requested me — or rather he requested “all of our first-years who look good in a suit”, and that included me. Why? To pretend to be lawyers.

One of his senior workers had made a very serious error in a tax return. Somehow, not only was the money directed to the wrong bank, but when the IRS sent the money, the wrong bank kept the money and put it into the account of an unrelated third party.

This created an enormous legal mess. The IRS is NOT supposed to put money in an account without your name on it. There’s a lot that went wrong here.

This turned into meetings of clusters of lawyers — lawyers for the client, for the bank that actually got the money, for the bank that was supposed to get the money, and for the US government.

[Manager] felt… underrepresented. So, he had all of the first-years who looked good in suits dress up like lawyers and hold empty briefcases. There were three of us that he selected: two men and one woman. We were told to stand next to him and keep our mouths shut.

In truth, we didn’t have to do anything. [Manager] had almost no part to play in the event, simply answering about five questions while everyone else argued.

But that was the time I had to be a fake lawyer for my employer.