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On the phone with the IRS

April 10, 2006 by Joanne Brokaw

12:27 PM - I've been on hold with the IRS for about 40 minutes. I need to ask a question about something on my daughter's tax return. Something stupid that my tax accountant is too busy to answer. All I need is someone to look at a piece of paper and tell me which number needs to get plugged into the return. So rather than drive 20 minutes to Joe's office, point to a line on a dividends statement and get my answer, I am slowly going insane on line with the IRS.

I expected to be on hold for a while. Tax deadline is in five days, after all. Unfortunately Cassie had been waiting to get a duplicate of her W2 and it's taken forever to arrive. I got home from TN last Thursday and found the paper in the mail. While I have the forms filled out I'm not 100% sure I've done it right. When she moved to Florida she cashed in an small investment account she'd received years ago as a gift and I have to figure out how to put that on the tax return.

I should have been suspicious when a person answered the phone at the IRS's 800# on the second ring. He directed me to this musical purgatory and left me here to go crazy.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't repeatedly playing "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" over and over and over and over. Almost an hour now of the same song. It's stuff like this that causes people to go insane. It's not the wait. It's the muzak.

Every time the music is interrupted with a brief blip I expect a person to answer, but instead it's the recorded message stating, "Thank you for your patience, as if you have a choice. Please hold while we restart the muzak. And for goodness sake, don't hang up. We've got your phone number tagged and will double your wait time the next time you call."

OK, so I made that up. But really. We all know that's what they mean. In fact, it's almost what they say, only they use nicer words.

More than an hour now on hold. Do you think the entire IRS offices are out at lunch and are just letting us sit here on hold? Are they laughing, knowing that we're at their mercy? Do they know that they're slowing eating away at my brain by playing this song over and over? It makes me want to stick paper clips under my fingernails and ball point pens in my eyeballs.

It's funny how fast an hour can go. I can't believe it's been that long. An hour out of my life that I can't get back. What else could I have done in that hour? Go to the bathroom. Clean my desk. Take a walk. Instead I want to pull out my eyelashes one by one and bang my head against the wall.

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