Just recently had another stupid interaction with my dad, I’m the same OP from these stories.

So, spring in Minnesota isn’t consistent, temperature-wise. Some days are very cold. Some days are very hot. Very few days are a nice, comfortable middle-of-the-road temperature.

The last couple of days were very hot, in the mid-80s and low 90s. Today is very cool, in the high 40s and mid 50s.

My dad comes to visit somewhat unexpectedly. He calls ahead of course, but… I only get maybe a day or two’s warning.

My initial plan assumes a warm day. We’re both fairly outdoorsy people, so I make a plan for us to hike together in a nearby state park. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, the weather changes. On the day of, it’s chill and damp.

Now, over the phone, I’d discussed my preliminary plans to go hiking with Dad. Now he’s here in front of me. We’ve just finished breakfast together.

Me: “It’s going to be a little chilly all day, so I no longer recommend hiking. Would you like to go to the zoo? Or maybe a museum?”

He’s not as ‘into’ these activities as hiking, but they’re things both of us enjoy.

Dad: “I’ll be fine. You talked about hiking over the phone, so I’d like to go do that.”

Me: “It’s going to be cold. Do you have a jacket?”

Dad: “I’ll be fine. That park you told me about sounds fun. Besides, you said it was about an hour and a half drive. The day should warm up by then.”

Me: “The day’s not going to warm up. It’s going to be chilly. There’ll be damp all day. Please make sure you have a jacket.”

Dad: “I’ll be fine. Let’s go hiking together like we used to when you were a kid.”

I thought to myself, “This is going to be more like when I was a child than you’ll expect”. In the past, I’d been uncomfortable all day from bad hiking clothing choices before I’d learned how to dress appropriately. I guess it’s Dad’s turn.

I get dressed in my jacket, which is waterproof, and a hat with ear covers, as my ears often get very cold.

Dad: “Do you have to wear that hat? I’ll be embarrassed to be seen with you! It’s overkill.”

He always says this when I wear something that covers my ears.

Me: “My ears get very cold even in weather you think is warm, and you don’t get to police my clothing choices anymore.”

I always respond with this.

Dad: “Oh.”

This is the standard ending to the conversation about my ears.

This isn’t the sort of weather that an umbrella helps with; the water’s not going to be falling from the sky, just generally floating in on the wind, so I don’t pack one. Besides, I prefer just wearing a rainproof jacket and pants.

When I’m done getting ready, I’m in a rainproof light jacket, rainproof pants, rainproof gloves, and I’m wearing a hat that keeps my ears warm.

Dad’s wearing a long-sleeved light sweater, a ball cap, and a pair of jeans. Well, at least he changed out of the shorts and T-shirt.

We’re both wearing hiking boots, and we’ve both got canteens with water and small packs of potentially necessary supplies: Band-Aids, sanitary wipes, and trail mix.

I look Dad up and down again.

Me: “I promise you, I’ve checked the weather. Are you sure you’re dressed appropriately for this? It’s going to be damp and cold. Not raining, but frankly, the type of clinging fog we’re going to be getting is worse than rain.”

Dad: “[My Name], I will be alright. I’ve done this plenty of times. I know what I’m doing, and you don’t have to worry about me.”

Me: “If you’re sure.”

So we go and drive about an hour and a half. We get to the park at about 10 AM, and it’s still cold and damp. We choose a path together, I want to take a short one-two hour one in case the weather is too much for Dad, he wants to take a long six-hour one. We compromise and go on a four-hour path.

By the time we’re done hiking, Dad’s hands are bluish, his lips are bluish, and he’s shivering uncontrollably. His sweater is absolutely soaked. We rushed the final quarter of the trail and passed up on some scenic things he originally wanted to see because he was too cold and wasn’t feeling well.

Dad: “You didn’t tell me the weather would be like this.”

Me: “I did.”

Dad: “I meant three days ago when we were planning the visit.”

Me: “I didn’t know three days ago. Weather prediction changed. It happens.”

Dad: “No, it doesn’t.”

Me: “Dad. We’re Midwesterners. We live in the Midwest. You grew up in Michigan. I grew up in Iowa.”

Dad: “Actually, you were born in LA.”

Me: “Yes, and you moved us to Iowa before I went to elementary school. I don’t even remember LA.”

Dad: “You remember the Kumquat tree we had in our courtyard.”

Me: “I remember the Kumquat tree in our apartment complex’s courtyard. I remember nothing else of LA.”

Dad: “You remember—”

Me: “—For Pete’s sake: You taught me the joke ‘if you don’t like the weather in the Midwest just wait five minutes and it’ll change’. You know as well as I do that weather predictions changed, especially in the Midwest.”

Dad: “Well, it shouldn’t have.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that, so I just ushered him back into my car, and the towel I’d brought along just in case.

We stopped by a restaurant on the way back into town to warm up and get some food in us.

Dad: “Hey. I had a nice time despite the weather. It was fun. Perhaps next time we can do something indoors?”

Me: “Sure. If you give me enough warning, next time we can do a concert or something.”

Dad: “That would be nice.”

I got him back to his car, and we went our separate ways.

I do taxes for a living. A client owes some money to the IRS, about two hundred dollars. She’s an older woman, she owed last year as well, nothing about this should be a surprise or abnormal for her.

Me: “How do you want to pay the IRS?”

Client: “Can I mail them a check?”

Me: “Yes. Let me print up for you a slip sheet and a voucher.”

I put the slip sheet in the envelope so that the address shows through the little plastic window, clip the voucher to the side with a paperclip, and tell her to mail the check and voucher to the IRS in the envelope.

A few weeks later, she comes back mad as h***.

Client: “The IRS returned the check! You must have done something wrong! Now I’m going to have a late penalty.”

She dramatically throws the returned, still sealed, envelope down onto my desk. I glance over it and notice immediately what went wrong: She’d inserted the check so that it covered up the IRS’s address in the window on the envelope.

I let her rant at me for a bit until she felt better, then I got another envelope from the back, gently opened the one that the post office (not the IRS) returned, moved the slip sheet, voucher, and check into the new envelope so that the destination address was clearly visible through the window, resealed it, wrote her return address on it, and handed it to her.

Me: “Should work now. Make sure to put a fresh stamp on it.”

Client: “Good. Don’t let this happen again in the future, or I shan’t be returning.”

Me: “Okay. Have a nice night.”

And she left, not to darken my door until next year.

I have a couple whose taxes I’ve done a few years in a row now. They have three children, the wife doesn’t work, and the husband recently got a promotion at work. Instead of making about 30k between the two of them, this year they’ve made about 65k. This means that they’re no longer getting the earned income credit.

Last year, they got a refund of about seven thousand dollars. This year, due to their low withholding, they’ve got to pay Uncle Sam about a hundred dollars.

They’re not pleased about this and keep asking me to explain why they didn’t get their refund. I explained several different ways, I showed them the calculations we used, I did everything I could. I even used the old saw “The more you make, the more they take”.

Finally, I said:

Me: “You’re not getting the refund because you got promoted at your job.”

That, uh, that was a mistake. They left, crying, and said they’d get back to me tomorrow.

Well, they came back the next day, and the husband, crying, said he just quit his job that he loved so much so can they please get their $7,000 refund.

…

I’m crying now because, no, that’s not what I meant, that’s not how it worked, they damaged their own futures because of a misunderstanding.

Anyway, I’m still shaken up over it, and I’m still not sure they understood my re-attempts to explain it to them, but there’s only so long I have to sit with any client, and I had other clients too. I don’t understand how someone misunderstood that so badly, and I don’t understand how to communicate it to them, but mostly I feel really bad for their kids. 

Related:
Refunder Blunder, Part 77
Refunder Blunder, Part 76
Refunder Blunder, Part 75
Refunder Blunder, Part 74
Refunder Blunder, Part 73

I work for a major tax preparation company. We allow you to take your tax prep fees out of your refund. If your prior year refund gets seized for whatever reason, we don’t get paid, and so a debt remains against you in our system.

If you come in again, and do your taxes with us again, in another year after we didn’t get paid, and still opt to take the fees out of the refund, we will take both tax prep fees out of your refund.

I have a client. He’s filing his 2023 taxes with me. His 2022 federal tax refund was seized to pay some debt of his. He wants his fees taken out of his refund. I explain to him that we will also take the prior year’s fees out of his refund. He agrees to this.

His refund comes in. He calls us.

Client: “Hey. Why is my refund smaller than you said it would be?”

Me: “How so?”

Client: “My refund is supposed to be [amount before our fees are taken out].”

Me: “We took the fees out of your refund, so your refund after that should be [slightly lower amount], after our fees and prior year fees are taken out.”

Client: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Me: “It’s on the paperwork you signed. I have a signed copy in front of me in your digital file.”

Client: “No, I don’t mean that.”

Me: “I don’t quite understand?”

Client: “My refund was [smaller amount than the amount from after our fees are taken out].”

Me: “One moment.”

I logged into the IRS website and checked his refund.

Me: “It looks like your refund was seized to pay a prior year debt.”

Client: “Yes, I know about that, but why didn’t you tell me?”

Me: “Because we didn’t know about the debt?”

Client: “No, you took your debt out.”

Me: “Yes, but we didn’t know about this other debt.”

Client: “But don’t you have it in the system?”

Me: “No.”

Client: “But you knew about it.”

Me: “No. We knew about what you owed us. This was someone else.”

Client: “But why did it get taken from my refund?”

Me: “Because they petitioned the federal government to do so.”

Client: “But why didn’t you tell me about it?”

Me: “Because we had no way of knowing.”

Client: “No. You knew about my prior year debt.”

Me: “That debt was with us, of course, we knew about it. This debt is with someone else.”

Client: “But you didn’t tell me about it.”

At this point, my next client came in, and I could spend no further time on the phone, so I transferred him to my manager with a warning that this client was particularly dense.

Four hours and seven clients later, my manager calls me.

Manager: “So, that guy you transferred to me…”

Me: “Yes?”

Manager: “You warned me he was dense.”

Me: “I did.”

Manager: “I just got done with him.”

Me: “It took four hours to get through to him?”

Manager: “No. I got fed up with him and had other work to do, so I transferred him to headquarters. How many clients did you do while I was talking to him?”

Me: “Why?”

Manager: “So I can fill out this worksheet to show that talking to him into overtime was a productive use of my time and that we made more money as a result of it than it cost me.”

Me: “Oh. Seven”

Manager: “Terrific. Thanks.”

The guy just came back in to do his 2024 taxes with a $25 coupon. So, I guess now I know how corporate handled it.

We have an hour for lunch. Normally, that’s enough to eat or do errands, but on this day, I had an extra hard errand that took me more than an hour to do. I grabbed some Mexican food from a fast-food joint in the skyway on my way back.

My coworker and I have to stagger our lunches so one of us is watching the phones at all times; she was very much aware that I was late. I apologized and explained what had happened.

Coworker #1: “And you didn’t think to call and let me know! That’s very inconsiderate.”

Two other coworkers in our area have noticed her berating me. One decides to take her lunch and avoid the drama; the other might as well have had popcorn, she was watching so intently. Coworker #1 is still laying into me, and I continue to apologize.

Me: “I agree. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Coworker #1: “Good. Now I’m late for lunch, I’m angry, and I’m hungry. You got Taco Johns?”

Me: “I did.”

Coworker #1: “Did you get the potato things with the cheese dip?

Me: “I did. Do you want some?’

Coworker #1: “Yes, I do.

I shared my potatoes and cheese dip with her, and she smiled. Our conversation returned to normal volume levels.

The coworker who was watching us got confused.

Coworker #2: “Wait! That’s it? You were yelling at him, and now you’re okay?

Coworker #1: “Yep. He apologized and gave me cheese. We’re good now.

Coworker #2: “And you’re giving her cheese?

Me: “I was wrong. It’s the least I can do.”

[Coworker #2] shook her head and left us to our potatoes and cheese dip. I don’t think she ever understood how we could resolve issues without more drama.