tax bills were mailed out earlier this week. this is a serious event around here, even in years when the tax rate has remained relatively constant, which this year it hasn't. at the moment people are scurrying around the office battening down the hatches and laying away supplies of fruit and fresh water in anticipation of the angry mob that experts predict will beseige the building sometime between 8:30 and 9 AM on Monday. because of the mayor and his cronies, people are about to see their property taxes increase by anywhere from 11% (the lucky few) to whopping 49% (recent annexation victims). compounding this problem is the fact that the mayor lied about the size of the increase and the rest of the city government doesn't seem to care what happens. this is a serious, serious problem.

it is also, in an rare turn of events, a problem that is in no way due to our office. sure, it's comforting for us to remind ourselves that this isn't our fault. but working here has taught me nothing if not this: rationally pointing out the fact that our office has nothing to do with taxes going up is unlikely stop an angry mob from perforating our insides with pitchforks or burning us with torches. and so here we sit, cowering at our desks, trying to debate whether it would be illegal for us to refuse to open the office to the public on Monday.

in an attempt to make lemonade from our lemons, I suggested yesterday that we open a bar in the lobby in order to turn a profit from all of the (justifiably) distraught taxpayers that will no doubt enter angry and leave looking around for a drink. perhaps we might have offered a free beer to anyone whose taxes go up by 45 or more percent. but as I thought about it, I'm not sure that giving an angry mob something to drink is really going to make the problem any better. in fact, there might be no better recipe for blunt force trauma than mixing money, anger and booze. perhaps I could buy drinks for everyone in the office to try and lessen the sting of the severe beating that may very well be laid upon us next week. if you happen to know of any ways to get rid of angry taxpayers in a hurry, please please get in touch with me ASAP. we might even be willing to pay you for your ideas.

and if a solution to the problem isn't going to be hard enough to figure out, as the workday wears on it is becoming increasingly clear that we may not have until Monday to figure out a way to defuse the impending armageddon. the phone has already begun to ring with a frightening regularity, considering that the tax bills probably only arrived in today's mail. and while I might otherwise have been dragooned into answering the phone, a lack of professionalism and dysfunctional management have teamed up to rescue me once again from my irrational fear of the phone. suffice to say, there isn't a phone in sight and I couldn't be happier. come Monday I may need to show up to work in riot gear, but for the moment I can quietly sit in the data entry room and pretend that I can't hear the phone.