Bad employee, good person?

[jenepel]

So my boss is on the phone in his office, so I grabbed the other line when it rang. It was a potential client, ringing around for price quotes. But when I got ahold of his situation, it was too simple. He's a student, he make under the exclusion, he's a dual citizen. He should just go into the Embassy and get them to show him how to do the 1040 and 2555, because that's all he needs. He shouldn't pay us upwards of £400 to do a return that would take 15 minutes. Or less.

So I told him that.

Yeah, okay I shouldn't have. But I could tell by his tone that he wasn't going to pay that money. He can't afford it. So likely instead he's just going to not file at all. Which is dumb. So not only did I tell him about the Embassy walk-in hours, I also told him the two forms he needs and how he can get them from the IRS site, and then did a five minute explanation of how to do them. So sue me. I mean Bruce probably wouldn't care about telling the guy about the Embassy - it's not like he's gonna hire us anyway - but I probably shouldn't have spent that extra time elaborating.

It's at times like this that I miss the IRS office. At least I didn't have to feel guilty for helping someone!

I have Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me" in my head. This is strange because I haven't played guitar hero in about a week.

Comments

[iamseb.livejournal.com]

Doing nice things for people. Sucks that it doesn't pay the bills. :(

I woke up with Welcome to the Jungle in my head. Damn that game!

[jenepel.livejournal.com]

The other one that gets stuck in my head is No Sleep Til Brooklyn!

[basilm.livejournal.com]

ahhh that song! now it will be stuck in my head.

you did the right thing!

[mizzykitty.livejournal.com]

Aw, I can't help but sort people out when they are having issues and I know how to fix it. Used to work for one of those internet help phone pools (like if you ring Virgin to bitch about your internet service, that kind of thing). And we were supposed to spend less than 10 minutes on the phone with the customer. If they had more than a simple problem (seriously, we were supposed to ask if they plugged in their computer), we were supposed to upgrade them to tech support. But that would have made them wait on the phone another half hour, sometimes longer, and often they had already been waiting for some time. So I felt bad, and always tried to fix their issues if it was something fairly simple (and it usually was). So in conclusion, work places suck and good on you for helping that guy out! =D

[jenepel.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's always a money thing. I do think there should be simple tax classes in London for this type of stuff so that people could learn to do their own. I have a dream...!

[jennywren06.livejournal.com]

Good for you for helping that guy out. My office charges a fee to fill out forms, but if a patient only needs a quick note, I won't charge them, even though technically I could. I just feel bad charging for something that takes 30 seconds to fill out.

[jenepel.livejournal.com]

See, yeah that's great. I love it when I go in somewhere and people do something randomly kind like that. The consensus of replies seem to be that this is a good thing to do and everyone's doing it a little in their own way. :) Sticking it to the man? Or something.