Nothing like waiting until the last minute

On October 15th we had a customer come into our office at 12:35 PM requesting tax return data for 2010, 2011, & 2012. She needed this for a 1:00 appointment with her tax person who is located 20 minutes away. Yes, cutting it down the wire don't you think? Oh, but it gets better. We can't print these in our office. We have to fax the request to another office, and they'll process it in around an hour. But wait, there's more. The data for 2012 can only be mailed to the person's home address. Oops. The customer was getting a bit frantic because that day was the last day of the extension to file taxes. To summarize, she waited to get data she needed until 25 minutes before her appointment which was 20 minutes away by car on the very last day to file 3 years of taxes. This is definitely a case of waiting until the last minute.

Your Tax Dollars at Waste

You might wonder if my life as a state employee has given me insight into whether or not your tax dollars are being wasted. The answers are yes and yes. Case in point: all the offices of my division open at 8. My office however, is located in a building that opens at 8:30. Some of you already get it. For those of you who don't, here goes: No customers can get in before 8:30. Our staff is let in at 8. Thus, for the first half hour of the day we are guaranteed no walk-ins. Very few people call before then either, so we essentially get paid to chill. Life is hard.

Thank you dear taxpayers for this paid break every day.

You Know It's Bad When...

You know you aren't the only one who thought your former employer was bad when you get an e-mail like this:

Hi [me],
I was surprised to learn from [President of former employer] (then [my former boss]) that you had left. I understand. Please keep in touch. I periodically come to [my area].
[former coworker]

This person quit not long before I did. My favorite part of his e-mail? The "I understand" part. I love it.

Great quote on finances- UPDATE

I contacted the journal that published the article which I referenced in my last blog post telling them how much I liked the article, mentioned that I would have liked to have posted a link to the article on my blog, and asked them to relay my compliments to the author. I got an e-mail from the author thanking me for my comments, and he gave me a link to a free site where his article is posted. Enjoy!

Great quote on finances

I recently read an article about personal finance by Dan Cupkovic in a local business journal. Unfortunately I can't post the link since it's exclusive content for subscribers. What I will share are his three main points: patience, perseverance, & frugality; and the last sentence, a quote that resonated with me "Becoming wealthy is a psychological commitment, first and foremost." I will be the first to say that I am completely against the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. But I do believe that being good stewards of what we have puts us in the position to do great things to improve the lives of others and gives us more options in our personal lives.

I am always horrified when I hear people say "I'll always be poor" or "I'll never have money." You are sealing your own fate at that point. You say it, and you set yourself up to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't believe that if I say "there will be $10 million on my front porch when I get home from work tomorrow" that suddenly it will happen, but I also know it's not impossible (improbable yes). When you set your mind that you will be better off financially than you are today, your open your mind, eyes, and ears to the possibilities you encounter that can help you make that goal a reality.

Say yes to the dress(up)

One of the things that strikes me when I look at old pictures is the dress. A local paper recently ran a picture that was from the 50's or earlier. The women were wearing dresses and the men were wearing suits. At a county fair. Contrast that with today where people can't be bothered to change out of their pajama pants to go to the grocery. A couple years ago a former coworker of mine saw a lady in line at Best Buy wearing a bath robe. Crazy.

We judge others by what they wear and vice versa. It's not always a conscious process. But it's real. When I worked in HR at my last job, I always had high expectations for candidates. If you don't care enough to look professional to interview, you don't want the job very much. Whom do you want to assist you when you are at the bank- someone nicely groomed with neat, clean clothes or someone who looks like they just dragged themselves in off a bender? They may be equally competent, but that's probably not the judgement you'd make based on their attire. Since impressions matter, why not make the most of them?

Does that mean you need to wear a suit to gas up your car? No. But dressing up a bit goes a long way. My last job had casual day on Friday. Most people wore jeans. Me? I usually wore a dress of some kind. I got many compliments on my outfits. Were they expensive? No. I'm a very hard core bargain shopper. Also, I was probably more comfortable in my clothes than they were in pants. My dresses felt like I was wearing pajamas to work but were much classier looking (and met the dress code).

Try a little experiment sometime. Dress just a bit above how you normally do. See if and how people treat you differently. You'll probably see why I say "Yes to the Dressup".