Workin' Man - Part XXXV - Changes and Retirement

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 The previous governor had made it a goal that our operations be more taxpayer friendly. It was my view that were anything but, with rules that sometimes made it appear that we were. For example, shareholders of incentives companies often had credits distributed to them which they could use to offset their individual state income tax liability. The problem was that individual tax returns were due in April, while most incentive companies filed for extensions and did not file until October or November. This meant that a taxpayer attempting to use incentive credits didn't actually have those credits since the distribution was part of the corporate filing by the incentive company they were receiving credits from. The front office ran a report every month which indicated how long returns were in the department before they were approved. If I saw that a taxpayer was expecting a credit distribution, but hadn't yet received it, I would sit on it until the credit came through. The front office saw these numbers and decided that if, after 60 days, the credit was not available we were to deny the use of the credits and process the return. This sometimes meant that the taxpayer owed money, and at least had to file an amended return after the credit went through. Not very taxpayer friendly, but since the report showed that the number of days that we spent processing a claim was low, it looked like we were taking care of the taxpayer. It took a CPA who was frustrated by this situation to complain directly to the Tax Commissioner to change the procedures. 

One of the things that the front office began to notice was that the amount of time that was spent approving claims was excessive. (It was) They directed that a slimmed down procedure for approving claims be developed. RO had no input in the process, but amazingly it really was an efficient, shorter process. Around this time the number of claims that I would be authorized to approve expanded. Initially senior agents could only approve claims where the tax was below a certain amount, which meant only the smallest claims. At first it was doubled, then increased another five fold so that I was approving all but the very largest of claims. Around this time several experienced auditors quit due to the ending of remote work. Several auditors from another area were trained as approvers...and they quit too. One of the things that I did to help keep our average days for claims low was to immediately prioritize a claim that was completed by an examiner. In most cases I could get my approval work done in one day and either sign the claim or send it back with feedback. Mainly I achieved this by not re-doing all the examiners work, not reinventing the wheel, but confirming that they had in fact done the work. Due to my process our metrics were better than they had ever been. 

The other area that our group was responsible for was sales and use tax refunds for non-incentive companies. This mainly consisted of individuals and small businesses who had overpaid on sales tax or been charged sales tax in error. In some ways this was easier than incentives claims, since it didn't require as many hoops as incentives claims, but it could be more complicated due to the numerous tax exemptions and exceptions to the exemptions in the sales tax regulations. As claims came in they were added to a spreadsheet which the team would use to decide which claims to work on. When I started in the area we were extremely behind. The front office had mandated that incentives claims were the priority and that nothing else could be worked on as long as there was an incentive claim that was unfinished. This mandate had just been lifted, so we were free to start working these claims. On any given day the claims that had not been started the "To-Be-Assigned" (TBA) claims exceeded 100. We were prioritizing claims that were approaching 180 days, the statutory limit. Taxpayers were getting frustrated and resubmitting claims, so we had many duplicate claims. It was a mess. But this was an area where the team proved to be very efficient at getting these claims done. It was my practice to train new examiners on these claims first and incentives claims later. This meant that they had a lot of practice working a variety of claim types and were able to get proficient quickly. By the end of my time with Revenue we could easily keep the TBA's down below 20 every day, with some days no TBA's! 

One of the weirder incidents involved the haunted spreadsheet. The tracking spreadsheet for sales tax refund claims was huge. Nothing was every deleted from it or moved from it. Completed items were simply moved from one tab to another. Data was becoming corrupted. Information was being added, and then a half hour later it was gone. Information that was moved suddenly was back where it started from. My manager and I decided that a new, streamlined tracking Excel file should be created. One of our Business Systems Analysts created a new spreadsheet for us and the ghosts were exorcized! Learning the lessons of the old spreadsheet, it was checked and reviewed every day and errors corrected. 

Eventually the changes I made became "the way things are". The results that I achieved was appreciated, not only be my immediate supervisor, but all the way up the management chain, including the Tax Commissioner. I was kept busy training new people, a few who ended up moving on to better paying positions in Revenue or in other agencies. Toward the end of my tenure, there were team mates from other areas of Revenue who transferred into the Refund Claim Group as soon as there was an opening. The last two new examiners had transferred from other areas. 

I had been looking at an end point to my working career for a while, I probably started thinking about it three years before I actually did it. About a year before full Social Security retirement age I started seriously looking at the financial aspect and running the numbers. I logged onto the Nebraska Public Employees Retirement System retirement webinars. I asked a lot of questions of Medicare and Social Security and familiarized myself with the various insurance options. I did income and expenditure projections. I had legal pads and Excel spreadsheets full of options. Around six months before I actually retired I set a tentative date. I gave myself the option of staying a month or so past my tentative date if the negotiated raise was high enough (it wasn't). Finally I let my manager know my plans the December before I actually left. A pattern that I had seen in the department over the years was people leaving without management taking steps to make sure the knowledge that that person carried was preserved, that a replacement was trained. In addition to whatever the job description said, there were a lot of things that I did that weren't written down anywhere, processes that I had instituted myself. Even though it would cease to be my problem five minutes after I left on my last day I didn't want to leave a mess behind me and have all my hard work unravel. There were exceptions to the rule, and there was a procedure for posting for a position before it actually came open once a firm end date was announced. I pushed hard for them to do this. In April I notified HR of my retirement date and they posted for my position shortly thereafter.

Most of my time during this period was spent reviewing and updating procedures, and creating procedures for the tasks that were not covered by officially sanctioned procedures. I cross-trained several of my team to take over some of my responsibilities in case a replacement wasn't hired. About six weeks before I was scheduled to retire management chose my replacement. Fortunately it was someone with the relevant experience. I was concerned that training someone from outside the department, or even from another area of the department, would require a lot of training, including in the basics. My replacement had actually started in the Refund Claim Group and had been an examiner in the Incentives Group, so training in the fundamentals wasn't needed. I was able to ease her into the position's responsibilities. Management had decided that my replacement would be classified as a supervisor, which I had not been. This meant that she would be required to conduct annual reviews and attend meetings, which I had been spared. She quickly took over the job responsibilities until my last few weeks at work I was basically a consultant, without a lot to do!  

Finally my last day, June 13, 2025 came. The department had a retirement party for me that several family members as well as friends who had previously retired attended. The director in charge of our area gave a heartfelt speech praising me for my contributions and presented me with a certificate enrolling me as an Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska. My immediate manager also gave a speech, recounting my contributions to the department. The members of my team presented me with gifts. One team member gave a short speech about how he viewed me as a wise grandfather. I felt both appreciated and respected. 

And that was the difference in my last two and a half years. I was respected for my contributions and my point of view was appreciated. In many of the jobs I held over the years, even when I was a key person, I was never really more than a cog in the machine. In this last hurrah of my working life, I finally was given the respect that is really the due of any employee. 

Workin' Man - Part XXXIV - Resistance

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 The group that I would be supervising was part of Revenue Operations, which we all called "RO". Although I had supervisory responsibilities I was not classified a supervisor or supervising agent. The biggest difference was that I did not conduct annual or quarterly performance reviews and could not initiate any disciplinary actions. But other than that (and not having to go to supervisors' meetings!) I conducted all training, oversaw workflow for the team, and kept track of the work that we were assigned. I met individually with each team member to assess their work and give them an opportunity for feedback. I occasionally told my manager that he got me cheap; he had the benefits of my decades of management experience without having to give me manager's pay!

The biggest cultural difference between Audit and RO was the Auditors and Audit Managers were trained and educated as accountants (with some lawyers thrown in) while the RO Managers were concerned primarily with getting things done in a timely and taxpayer friendly manner. I often characterized this as "Audit is trained to look under every rock, for every potential problem, while the RO way is to get shit done!". The RO culture fit more closely with my own personal views and I found out quickly that I was on the same page as the management chain of command in my new area. In the case of sales tax refund claims for incentives companies RO management was compelled to work with Incentives management and agree on standards, so there was a continual tension between the two teams regarding how things should be done. Part of the problem was that auditors were still designated as the approvers on most claims. Senior agents like myself were only authorized to review smaller claims. The result was that although I was tasked with streamlining the review process, auditors and audit mangers were dragging their feet. 

One of my first assignments was to update the procedures for reviewing sales tax refund claims. The existing procedures were, in the opinion of just about anyone who had to use them, overly detailed, and confusing to use; so much as to be effectively useless. It wasn't that there was anything inaccurate in them, it's just that they were long on theory and short on practice. Newer examiners who were referred to the procedures for information came away, if possible, knowing less than when they started! While updating the procedures I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to update the training materials. I have written about the lack of training I received when I was hired, and speaking with recently hired examiners, I learned that the initial training hadn't gotten any better and in fact hadn't changed at all in seven years. Since it was in my job desciption to train new examiners I took it upon myself to revise the training materials so that a new hire had the ability to start reviewing a refund claim immediately upon finishing training. Of course there would always be more to learn, but the updated training would facilitate an examiner's ability to begin the review process. 

In addition to the procedures and the training materials (in the form of a Power Point presentation) there existed a checklist which contained the major items that had to be accomplished during a refund claim review. It was very bare-bones, i.e. not very detailed. My goal was to coordinate the information in the procedures, the training materials and the checklist, so that the same information was contained in each and was detailed enough that a new person would be able to follow the steps, including locating the paths to the various programs, for a complete refund review. I had the complete support of my managers, but unfortunately, the Incentives Group thought they should be involved.

Interference started right away. My first training session with the revised materials took place about a month after I started my new position. Even though it was my responsibility to train new hires, the previous Senior Agent for our team, who had transferred back to Incentives, sat in on my training and undermined me at every turn. After initial training was complete I often found this person sitting with  newer members of my team attempting to instill in them the audit way of doing things, which was usually in contravention of the RO method. Fortunately, having the full support of my manager, I was able to at least get claims for the new team members assigned to me for review, and not to this other person. This at least ensured that in the first formative months the new people would be immersed in our point of view. 

The most egregious instance of interference involved the aforementioned checklist. The checklist had existed at least since I had been hired. It was a decent framework for making sure the major items in a review were completed. However, it was really short on details. I envisioned it evolving into a step-by-step set of directions on how to do every aspect of a refund claim. And it was. Those who used it, especially the linear thinkers, loved it. They didn't have to flail around or ask dozens of questions looking for the multiple Revenue programs that you had to navigate to get all your information lined up. But for some reason we had to have a meeting to discuss it. For some reason, the previous tweaks to the checklist that the previous senior agent had added didn't require any meetings, but mine did. My position was that I was in charge of training and that I should have the freedom to design how that would be done. The meeting was a disaster. We spent an inordinate amount of time examining every single line and nitpicking my wording choices and even the order where lines appeared. After an hour and a half we had covered a small fraction of the whole checklist. The way this was conducted so infuriated me that I logged out of the (online) meeting. I scheduled a follow up session with my manager where I vented my frustration with the process. We scheduled a second meeting where my manager maintained control of the process and only allowed substantive comments and steered away from the nitpicking. In the end no changes of any substance were made. 

When I first began my new position it was decided that any claims that I reviewed for approval would be further reviewed by an experienced auditor or the Incentives Manager. This made sense, since even though I had been the reviewing examiner for seven years, I had never had the responsibility of approving these claims for payment. I made a few errors early on, but a lot of the feedback I was receiving involved things that I considered immaterial. In particular the manger who reviewed my reviews was not timely, and work on these claims dragged on. Claims where I was listed as the approver racked up a high number of days in the department, skewing our average negatively. I requested that either I be allowed to approve claims without my work being checked, or to remove me from the approval process completely, since these double approvals were just slowing things down. Shortly thereafter my approval reviews were no longer subject to a second review. And changes instituted by the executive office were coming. 

Workin' Man - Part XXXIII - Remote Work

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 Before I return to the final thirty months of my time with the state, let's look at remote work

Remote work on a large scale was approved in April 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic. Still part of the Incentives Group at the time, I was given equipment and access to Department of Revenue computer systems and worked from my home. In late 2021 the Tax Commissioner directed that, while remote work was still permitted, all employees would have to work in the office on a regular basis. My group was only required to come in once per month. Department-wide, productivity did not suffer, and we were in fact more efficient. If we wanted to work from home we had to sign a remote work agreement which stipulated that remote work was a privilege, not a right, which was somewhat insulting given that there were mutual advantages to the arrangement. When I was promoted to Senior Agent in the Refund Claim Group I was told that the standard was one day in the office (Monday) where the whole team was in the office together and one additional day at our own discretion. If I was actively training a new person the requirement increased to four days each week. I thought this was fair, since a new hire definitely benefitted from face-to-face contact with their trainer. One of the up sides to remote work, was that even if you worked mostly in the office, rather than taking a sick day, you could still be productive by working at home and sparing your coworkers from catching whatever bug you had. 

In December 2023 the Governor announced that remote work was ending as of January 2024. For a big change like this I would have expected to receive the information via an all-department email from the tax Commissioner, however we found out from media coverage of the governor's announcement. No follow-up from department leadership was forthcoming. The only communication that we received was an email from Human Resources during the last week of December "reminding" us that remote work was ending in a few days. The union immediately protested the change and a court put the governor's change on hold. The following day the Tax Commissioner announced that he was ending remote work, stating that this was completely separate from the governor's order. The court ended that as well. 

The governor chose this time to visit various state agencies, including the Department of Revenue. We were "treated" to a speech from the governor telling us how he wasn't a politician and how much he loved Nebraska and then asked if there were any questions. I had one: "When you make decisions like this that affect thousands of people, do you look at the evidence, do you talk to experts, or do you just make decisions based on feelings?" He rambled on for a few minutes without really answering the question, my manager was horrified, and dozens of people stopped by my desk to thank me for speaking out. After around six months of back and forth the union lost their protest and remote work was ended for good. 

I immediately brought back all the state-owned equipment from my home. If I wasn't permitted to work at home, I certainly wasn't going to be responsible for storing their equipment there. I was already working three to four days a week at the office due to my training responsibilities, so it wasn't that much of a change. However one day the power went out and we were told that we should work remotely by taking our laptops home. My manager's manager told me that I should be taking my laptop home every day. Previously the state was required to pay us for a full day if our work site was inaccessible. (This had happened once since I started)  I refused to do this, since there was no remote work agreement in force. Later, an update to the remote work policy gave us the option to work remotely if Lincoln Public Schools closed due to weather. I took advantage of this once. 

In addition to remote work, one of the advantages to working for the Department of Revenue was scheduling flexibility. If you needed to adjust your schedule due to an appointment or other personal reasons, you just did it, you didn't need to ask permission. This worked very well for me if I had a wedding or wanted to see a show at The Zoo Bar. But a few months before I left, this flexibility was taken away. Any deviation that resulted in more or less than eight hours per day had to be approved by Human Resources and the Front Office. Permission was often not granted. (This was a violation of the union agreement, but I wasn't a union member, nor did I want to make too many waves this close to retirement, so I let it slide)

I don't know what direction the micromanaging is taking, or which informal benefits will go next, but with the difficulty everywhere in staying fully staffed, I can't say that these are good ideas.

Workin' Man - Part XXXII - Turning the Corner

 Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

One of the things that I enjoyed about my time in the Incentives Group was that I didn't specialize in only one program. There were many incentives programs, and I worked on almost all of them. There were sales and use tax refund claims, which all of us worked on; there were claims for the refund of state withholding taxes. There was a program called Microenterprise, where small businesses, those with five or fewer Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employees. There was "preliminary analysis", where examiners would do a superficial review of an application to see if there was enough information for a full audit. Shareholder distribution involved approving the use of incentive credits by individual taxpayers. This helped keep things interesting and fresh. The program that I spent the most time on was Nebraska Historic Tax Credits (NHTC). This was a tax credit where developers could receive tax credits for rehabilitating buildings that were on the National Register of Historic Places. I learned more about construction, real estate development, and associated jargon than I thought possible!

The NHTC program was the rare area where my point of view was heard and I had some measure of respect. Eventually, anyway. Initially the expectations for my reviews was a moving target. My manager would give me and Sue, the other examiner who worked these claims, some direction, then once we were done with our review, would add requirements. No one really knew what the standards were. I was delegated the responsibility of creating tracking spreadsheets, as well as the spreadsheet we used to review a claim. As time went by and other employees who knew anything about NHTC retired or moved to other agencies, I became the only one who knew certain aspects of the program. As we all ended up working from home during the Covid pandemic, I was also the only one who was reviewing claims. About a year or so before I retired, management finally began training addition examiners, although they waited until my final month on the job before allowing me to train someone to take over my tracking responsibilities. 

In April of 2020, anyone whose job could be done remotely was given the option to do so. People had different opinions about whether they liked it or not, but personally I enjoyed working from home, especially after Susie and I moved in August of 2021 and I had a room that I could dedicate as a work space. (Before that I worked in an unheated basement). I felt that I was more productive away from the distractions of a busy office. In mid 2021 the Tax Commissioner gave us the option of continuing to work at home, with the condition that each work group all work one day a week (the same day for the whole group) in the office. Our group somehow was allowed to come in once a month. I don't know how we got away with that! I opted to keep working remotely. 

Starting just before the pandemic and continuing throughout 2020 and 2021 all of the examiners in our group had either retired or gotten promoted, and I was the most senior of all the examiners. My manager started assigning me to train new employees in some of the incentives programs, which I enjoyed doing. A few of my coworkers asked me why I wasn't a Senior Agent (a promotion from examiner) and encouraged me to push for the position. At the same time I was being given more responsibility, but the air of disrespect didn't go away. When it was time for my performance review in early 2022 I actively lobbied my manager and supervisor to be reclassified as a senior agent. I brought a copy of the job description and job duties and pointed out that I was already doing almost all of the requirement of the position. They told me that they would check with Stacey, who was the executive office director who oversaw our area, and get back to me, 

In addition to our annual performance reviews we also received quarterly reviews. These were less formal, but were a good time to give and receive feedback. During my First Quarter Review we went through the high points, engaged in some chit-chat, and then they attempted to end the meeting by asking if I had any questions. I responded that I had one question: what about the reclassification that I brought up three months ago? They told me that Stacey did not approve it, stating that our group was not budgeted for a senior agent position. I was angry that they were planning on ending the meeting without following up on my request, but figured that there wasn't anything I could do about it. But we're not done with this story.

Another three months went by. I had been nominated by my peers for Employee of the Year and for an Innovator Award. I didn't get either, which I would have been fine with, until I found out that my own manager had nominated an employee from another group as Employee of the Year! For the Innovator Award, there were only myself and two others as nominees, one who was no longer with the department, so I figured I would at least get Honorable Mention. Nope. They gave the Innovator Award to the employee who left the agency! But the big kick in the teeth was yet to come. 

One morning, at our daily "huddle", it was announced that a member of our group who had been promoted and transferred to another area was coming back...as a senior agent. I couldn't believe it. Just three months earlier we didn't have the budget, but now we did. And they didn't have the decency to take me aside and explain that this was happening. I had about had it with the disrespect. Of course, since this team mate was leaving her previous position, this meant that there was an opening as a Senior Agent in an area that had quite a bit of overlap with the Incentives Group. I had heard some negatives about how that group was run. It had been split off from the Incentives Group years before and was supervised by an Auditor IV who had previously been an auditor in the Incentives Group. Several examiners left the group to transfer to Incentives due to her toxic management style. I found out that she was leaving the department! I applied for the position, was hired and started in December 2022. 

Workin' Man - Part XXXI - If It Wasn't For the People...

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 For the most part working in the Department of Revenue was a vast improvement over working in retail. One reason was that I didn't have to deal with the public. The entitlement of the typical shopper was slowly sending me into a low-level rage every work day. I worked most holidays. I worked at least part of every weekend. My schedule at Revenue was Monday through Friday. We had numerous holidays off, including Arbor Day, which people outside of Nebraska never heard of! At first I was scheduled 8:00am - 4:30pm, which meant that I was home before the evening rush hour. Eventually my schedule moved earlier and earlier until I was working 6:30am - 3:00pm. This gave me more "off" time in the afternoons and evenings. In many ways the stress level was considerably lower. But I still had to deal with people - coworkers and managers. 

Most of the people around me were a pleasure to work with. We helped each other solve problems, showed each other tricks and shortcuts, and worked well as a team. There were exceptions though. I referred to, in the last article, my perception that there was a caste system in place in the department. I should say, not the whole department, but definitely my part of it. The Incentives Group, which I was a part of, was part of Audit, which in turn was a division of Compliance, which also included Collections, Sales Tax Auditors and Legal. There was a clear divide between the auditors and the examiners. Auditors were always superior to the examiners, no matter the level of experience. And since the auditor position required a level of academic achievement that the examiner position did not, it was impossible for an examiner to be promoted to auditor without earning a bachelors degree in accounting. This encouraged an attitude of superiority by the auditors over the examiners. This was exacerbated by the practice of examiners' work being reviewed and approved by the auditors. 

Accounting procedures required that any processes be reviewed by two individuals. In a business, the person writing the checks is not the same person keeping the books. Every decision is run by another person. In theory, this served as a level of training for new examiners since there really wasn't any training other than "here's your desk". To be fair, I had some auditors who gave me good feedback and helped me get better at my job without making feel like a second-class employee. Since initial training was virtually non-existent, this was effectively our training; making mistakes, getting them identified and corrected, then moving on to new mistakes! On the other hand there were auditors who it seemed like went out of their way to make us examiners look stupid. There were two who were egregiously bad. Coincidently they were both named Kim. 

Kim #1 was an experienced auditor, she knew a lot, but acted aggrieved all the time. To describe her as perpetually angry doesn't do justice to the level of anger that radiated off her. The story I heard was that a few years earlier there was a flattening of the organizational chart and that several layers of managers, supervisors and executives had been eliminated, Kim's position among them. For some odd reason her passive aggressive payback for this demotion was to print out everything and save it in her cubicle. Every email, every report, every audit. Every flat service was covered in tottering stacks of paper. Unlike other auditors who attempted to educate the newer examiners with feedback, Kim had two main approaches. One was to bark information at you so that you were so glad to get away from her that you weren't entirely sure if your question had been answered. The other was to decline to give you feedback when you made an mistake and just correct it herself. This ensured that you would continue to make the same mistake. Early in my tenure I was making an easily corrected mistake that Kim never told me I was making. After around six months I made the same mistake with a different auditor, who did correct me. I could have learned the right way six months earlier if I had gotten feedback from Kim. One of the things that Kim was in charge of was random samples.  

When we reviewed refund claim we didn't look at every invoice, just a sample based on whether the sales tax was over a pre-determined amount. This was called the "scope". The smaller invoices which we did not look at were referred to as "below scope" and were accepted without review. Except that periodically we would randomly sample 20-25 below scope invoices to ensure that they were legitimate. One of the examiners was responsible to select the random sample using a random number generator, which Kim would then approve. Except that Kim was extremely slow at approving them. I found that I was often completely done with a refund claim review before I had received approval for a random sample. So I started taking the preliminary sample listing that had been prepared for Kim's approval and using that. Eventually Kim figured out what I was doing and called me on it. Coincidently there was another examiner, who completely independent from me, was doing the same thing! Funny thing, when she complained to Mary, our manager, about my actions, it was decided that the examiners could create their own random samples instead of waiting for Kim to get around to approving them. Kim tried to throw me under the bus for some minor paperwork error, showing up at my desk with the manager and accusing me of failing to follow her directions. Two other auditors came to my rescue and stood up for me. I learned to stand up for myself and push back on her bullying and eventually she stopped bothering me. It may have had something to do with me catching a $400,000 aging error that she had approved  which required us getting that money back from a taxpayer. She retired before the pandemic. I run into her periodically and we get along just fine now!

Kim #2 was not outwardly aggressive. She was an auditor as well, but with much less experience than Kim #1. This lack of experience didn't dissuade her from lording it over the examiners. She was the auditor assigned to approve withholding claims. These were claims where taxpayers in incentive programs could receive a percentage of the withholding that they had paid to the state. In addition to this legitimate responsibility, she somehow believed that as an auditor, she was my supervisor, and could direct how I spent my time. The way the work group was structured was that all the examiners in our group, Incentives, and the Personal Income Tax and Collections (PITAC) group had a supervisor, who in turn reported to a manager. The auditors in both groups reported directly to the manager. Auditors had responsibility to review and approve examiners' work, but had no authority over how they spent their time, or any other supervisory tasks. Kim regularly questioned my schedule and priorities. Eventually I simply stopped answering her questions. 

There was one incident involving Kim that resulted in my one and only disciplinary meeting. One of the programs that I worked involved distributing credits to an incentive company's shareholders. I handled individual taxpayers while Kim handled partnerships and corporations. One day I found a folder on my desk that looked like a shareholder distribution for a partnership, so I walked it over to Kim #2's desk and left it there, since she wasn't at work yet. A few hours later one of the other examiners brought the folder back to me. She told me that Kim dumped it on her desk and told her to give it back to me, since it was obviously mine. The examiner relayed some of Kim's other remarks which were rude and condescending. I was irritated that Kim couldn't handle this herself, as well as the content of the remarks. I tossed the folder onto my desk and told the bearer of bad news that I didn't want to hear any more since it was just pissing me off. I just chalked it up to typical Kim rudeness and delusions of grandeur. About a week later I received a meeting invite that included my immediate supervisor, my manager...and no one else. After some weird small talk, they told me that they had received a complaint about me: that I had yelled at the other examiner, telling to stop pissing me off and threw the folder onto my desk. I decided to refrain from arguing and told them that the version they received was mostly accurate and that it wouldn't happen again. I never found out who complained, but it wasn't the other examiner.

One of the things that I thought I could bring to the table at the department was that I brought the perspective of someone who had been in the business world for my whole life, while most of the people around me had spent decades working for the government. Unlike many politicians, I didn't think that government should be run like a business, but I did think I could help them understand why businesses did what they did. I was sadly mistaken. Whenever I would attempt to give some perspective regarding how private businesses conducted themselves, I was shut down and my point of view dismissed. One particular example involved requirements for a new incentive program. Applicants were required to provide a copy of their Paid Time Off (PTO) policy. In a meeting one afternoon we were reviewing the information that this company sent us, including their PTO policy. My manager was insistent that they were not following the directions and that we needed to go back and ask for their complete PTO policy. I spoke up, pointing out that what they gave us was exactly what any private company would have as a PTO policy...based on my experience working outside of government. It was if I hadn't spoken. The conversation rolled on and I was ignored. 

To be fair, the stress level was considerably lower than it had been in retail, but the irritation level, the way the lack of respect and dismissal of my contributions, affected my work ethic, was not insignificant. In addition to this, my annual reviews, while never bad, were unhelpful and contained no detail about how I could improve or advance. After about six years, things changed...somewhat.

Workin' Man - Part XXX - State Deep State

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 My blizzard of job applications included four, if I remember correctly, positions in Nebraska State government. I received an email back from one of them, informing me that I was being considered, and was called in for an interview for a "Fiscal Compliance Analyst". The description was somewhat vague, but the requirements listed were all things that I had, including post-secondary coursework in accounting. One of the benefits that I took advantage of at B&R Stores was their tuition reimbursement program. They paid for a good portion of the two-year Associate Degree in Business with an Accounting Focus. I completed my degree during my first year as a store director at Russ's. This degree got me in the door at the Department of Revenue. When Revenue Human Resources called to schedule an interview I had completely forgotten even the vague job description, so I went into that interview unclear about what I was actually applying for. The interviewers, who I later found out were the Manager of the Incentives Group of the Audit Division and the Senior Auditor in that group, went through a list of generic questions, most of which I had asked people myself during the many job interviews I conducted in my management roles. I was asked how this position fit into my long range career plan. At fifty-seven years old, my career plan was anything but long term. I honestly told them that it didn't, but that I had read the job description (I had, even though I couldn't remember what was in it!) and I thought the requirements fit with my skill set. I then asked if the next question was going to be "Where do you see yourself in five years?" -- which it was! I told them that I hoped that I'd be in a job where I was valued and where I enjoyed going to work every day. I later found out that my age was a plus, since many younger people right out of college left after getting enough experience to move to a private accounting firm for a much higher salary. They figured at age fifty-seven I wasn't a job hopper. 

A week or so later I received a job offer and began my new career in early January 2016. 

The work group to which I was assigned handled tax incentives. Nebraska is one of many states that offer tax incentives to encourage businesses to locate in our state. In general, a company would agree to increase their employment and investment by a set amount and in return receive credits that could be used to offset income tax liability or receive refunds on sales taxes or state withholding tax. To utilize their credits a claim was submitted listing eligible sales tax transactions and claiming a refund on the amount of sales tax. Our group was made up of examiners and auditors. Examiner was the entry level position. An examiner did all the initial reviews of refund claims which were then checked over by auditors. Auditors also audited the businesses who applied to be on an incentive program. An auditor needed to have a Bachelors Degree in Accounting, so for an examiner to be promoted to an auditor position, they would need to receive a a degree; there were many examiners who remained in that position for 30 or 40 years. I often referred to the Audit Division separation between examiners and auditors as a caste system. (more on my perception of Revenue caste later).

When a taxpayer in an incentive program applied for a refund of sales tax, the examiners were the first to review the claims. The taxpayer would submit a listing of all the invoices for which they were claiming a refund of sales taxes, as well as pdf images of a percentages of those invoices. The examiner's job was to confirm several items on each invoice:

1. The invoice was for a transaction that took place at the taxpayer's business address ("at the project")
2. The tax on the invoice matched what was claimed
3. The vendor who charged the sales tax was licensed for sales tax in Nebraska
4. The transaction was properly paid tax, i.e. not an exempt transaction
5. Not previously paid on an earlier claim

There were other, more arcane things, to look for, but those were the basics. In retrospect, it should have been fairly simple to train a new examiner to review a sales tax refund claim. But for some reason new examiner training was designed to be as complicated as possible, with little information on how to actually review a claim. Training started out with a few days of generic training -- first with instruction on things like benefits, and moving on to audit-specific training. The problem was that the audit-specific training was very specific...it applied to auditors, not to examiners. I tried to absorb as much as I could but I'm glad I didn't try too hard, since it had nothing to do with me! 

The next phase of my training involved sitting in a conference room listening to a senior auditor go through a Power Point presentation. There was so much information that I was having trouble keeping up, or even understanding what the point of much of it was. It certainly gave me virtually no information on how to review a refund claim. Years later, when I became responsible for training, I referred to it as long on theory, but short on practice. It didn't help that the person who was supposed to be training us (another examiner started on the same day as I did) started out the training by admitting that she wasn't very good at training. After our completely useless training Jessica (my coworker who started when I did) and I attempted to review the claim that we were assigned. Since we had received no practical instruction regarding what we should be looking for, we agonized over every invoice. Attempts to get clarification elicited curt answers that were only partially helpful. Jessica was convinced that we were going to get fired because we didn't know what we were doing. I knew better. While a trainee is responsible to learn the job, the greater responsibility is on the shoulders of the trainer, who is tasked with ensuring that the new employee has the tools needed to do their assigned job. We were not given those tools. 

My own learning style is hands-on. I learn best by doing the work and learning from my mistakes and from feedback from my supervisors and trainers. Part of my process is paring away the information that I don't need and concentrating on what is important to get the job done. For example, the main incentive program consisted of six tiers. Each tier had different requirements and different benefits for meeting those requirements. With one minor exception a review of a refund claim could be completed without understanding the difference among the tiers, or even knowing what tier the taxpayer's project was. So I ignored this information. In fact, over nine years later, as I approached retirement, I still didn't know the details of the different tiers without looking them up and it didn't affect my ability to work claims, or eventually to approve and sign off on them. 

One challenge of working for the state didn't directly involve the work that I was doing, but the fact that it was extremely difficult to find a parking spot. There were two state owned garages, and several surface parking lots, but there was a waiting list for all of them. Most of the streets around the State Office Building had metered parking. When I started work parking was $2.00 an hour, soon to go up to $2.50 and eventually $3.00. For an 8½ hour day, a $17.00 per day expense ($340 for the month!) was not reasonable (private garages were $10.00 for the whole day) so while on the parking spot waiting list I had to scout around in the morning for a street without meters. After trying different spot at varying distances from the office I finally settled on a couple of streets that were pretty close. There was a couple of streets two blocks long running east-west, crossed by another street running a block north and a block south. At its closest it was two blocks from the office. I found if I arrived after 6:15 and before 6:45 there was plenty of available spots to park. The streets were full of apartments and apparently most of the residents left for work between 6:15 and 6:45! I parked there every day until I finally got a garage spot the week before we were all sent home in April 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.

Zipper Merge and the Left Lane

We've all been there. A lane is closing up ahead. Everyone moves over to the lane that's staying open. Except for that one asshole who stays in the lane that's closing, speeding to the front of the line, trying to merge in ahead of everyone else. Or maybe you've been  that asshole! Despite what the popular view might be, the "asshole" is following the law, and you can get ticketed if you refuse to let him in. Welcome to the bright future world of zipper merging. 

The zipper merging advocates suggest that utilizing all open lanes up to the point where one of them is no longer open, then taking turns merging into the remaining lane.  There are studies that indicate that this is more efficient -- that traffic actually moves faster when zipper merging. I have to wonder whether these studies took place under real-life conditions or were mathematical models, because I have never seen a video of this working smoothly. Sure, I've seen plenty of animations illustrating how it should work, but nothing showing real cars in real traffic smoothly zipper merging. 

I'll concede that there are certain scenarios where it theoretically should work better than everyone moving over as soon as the "lane closing" sign appears. One might be in bumper-to-bumper, slow moving traffic where every lane is already occupied. Trying to move over right away would require vehicles slowing down to create gaps in the traffic flow to allow people to merge early. This would slow down everything.  In this situation it's unlikely that one could move over very easily. But when the traffic got to the choke point, both lanes would need to slow down enough to allow alternate merging into the open lane. It's not clear to me that zipper merging would cause traffic to move faster, although it would prevent the traffic from extending back so far as to block exits, which is a benefit. You'd still need to deal with the human tendency to think of themselves first -- drivers would all need to follow the rules, but I'm not convinced, for the previously stated reasons, that traffic would move any faster.

Now if traffic is moving at, or close to, the speed limit, and and there are enough naturally occurring gaps between vehicles (as there should be -- 1 second for every 10mph) then it should make absolutely no difference when you move over to the open lane. In fact, if vehicles are sliding out of the lane that is closing when there is a natural break in the flow of traffic in the other lane, rather than waiting until the merge point, traffic should continue to move at the same rate. If everybody waits until one of the lanes disappears, both lanes are going to have to slow down to allow each lane to alternately move forward. The only way zipper merging works in this scenario is if (1) space between vehicles in the lane that is staying open is maintained and (2) drivers in the lane that is closing merge into the space left for them without slowing or stopping and (3) no one is a jerk. In my opinion the probability of "1" and "3" is 50-50 at best; the probability of "2" is going to be pretty low -- drivers are going to be naturally hesitant about pulling in front of another moving vehicle and hoping that they allowed enough space and time. The natural reaction will be to at least slightly slow down, causing a chain reaction, slowing everyone down. Then there's the question of why, in some scenarios, is anyone even in what is usually designated as the passing lane?

Rules about the left lane on multi-lane roads is another of the things that irritate me. In most states the far left lane is for actively passing slower vehicles only. The reasoning is that drivers should be free to drive at the speed limit -- if a vehicle is traveling below that speed, other drivers should have the option to safely get around them. It makes sense to me. But I hear a lot of complaining from drivers who are stuck behind someone in the passing lane not going fast enough. Technically, if you stay in the left lane while not actively passing slower traffic, it's a traffic offense that will earn you a ticket. What I see most though, are people griping that someone driving at the speed limit is preventing them from exceeding the speed limit! I even recently saw a video where a member of law enforcement proudly ticketed drivers "camped out" in the left lane at the speed limit, while ignoring people speeding around them.  Logically, if I am driving at the speed limit in the passing lane, why does anyone need to pass me? By passing someone driving at the speed limit they are exceeding the limit and breaking the law! I have no idea whether most highway patrolmen ticket people for hogging the left lane, but I know they'll nab you for speeding if they catch you. 

Personally I drive 5 mph over the speed limit on the interstate. Illegal, I know, but I'm gambling that the cops are going to let it slide and I've never received a ticket for driving between 1-5 mph over the limit. (It's a misconception that cops can't pull you over for going less than 5 mph over, but they usually won't) Some days the middle and right lanes are full of people who are driving slower, so rather than constantly changing lanes to pass car after car of slower vehicles I stay in the left lane for long stretches. In those situations I feel no obligation to enable someone who wants to break the law even more than I'm already breaking it. If someone comes roaring up behind me when I'm already doing 80 in a 75, they're just going to have to wait until there's a clear stretch of road in the middle lane for me to get over to. Chances are they're going to thread the needle through small gaps and pass me in the center lane or even way over on the right. Not my problem. Now, if I have an open middle lane, that's where I'll be.

Workin' Man - Part XXIX - Chain of Command

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 While I've got my time at the state on hold until after I retire, I thought I'd revisit some specific categories of previous jobs.

One of the more frustrating aspects of working for B&R Stores was the lack of any clear "chain of command". If you were hired as an entry-level employee you might think it was pretty clear -- there was a Store Director at the top of the pyramid, with an Assistant Store director and a Human Resources Coordinator the next step down, followed by department managers. If you worked in the Dairy Department you received your assignments from the Dairy Manager, who in turn reported to the Store Director. The Store Director reported to the Vice President of Operations, or later, the District Manager (and he reported to the VP of Operations) and the Operations VP reported to the President. In theory, pretty simple. But the waters were muddied by the presence of Department Directors.

Department Directors were corporate office personnel who were responsible for a single department in all stores. For example, the Produce Director was responsible for setting prices in all Produce Departments, deciding on product variety, overseeing training of department managers, and setting department standards. Every department had its own director. In theory, it wasn't a bad system, but as in most areas of life, theory and practice did not align. The authority and responsibility of the Store Director for all that happened within the four walls of a store often competed with actions by a Department Director. One area was hiring. 

If there was a department manager opening, the Store Director would interview and make the final decision for who would be hired for the position. Assistant Department Mangers from his and other stores might apply, or there might be outside candidates. For internal candidates the Store Director might seek feedback from the applicant's manager or from the Department Director. But on many occasions the Department Director would unilaterally decide to transfer Department Managers from one store to another, in which case the Store Director had no input into his new staff member. If this wasn't bad enough, when there was an opening in a high sales volume store the Department Director would transfer a Department Manager from a smaller store to the high volume store, leaving the low volume store with the opening. Did the Department Director then fill the now open position? Nope. It was up to the Store Director, who previously did not have an open position, to run ads, conduct interviews, and fill the position. This happened to me multiple times when I was the Store Director at Russ's Van Dorn, especially when corporate knew that they were closing the store. 

Things would get confusing when Department Directors would issue conflicting orders to their Department Managers. The Grocery Department Director might instruct his managers to cross-merchandise by placing some items in specific places in the Meat Department, while the Meat Director would prohibit non-meat items from being placed in those spots, leaving it up to the Store Director to mediate. Sometimes Department Directors would encourage their managers to act as if they were independent entities. I sat in on a meeting of Meat Department Managers where they were explicitly told to disregard certain orders from their Store Directors. 

Human Resources often acted as if they were completely separate from store chain of command as well. In theory, Human Resources Coordinators were responsible for hiring entry level employees, setting up interviews for management openings, processing vacation requests and payroll, and keeping the paperwork flowing. Technically within the chain of command of a store, in practice they answered to Donna, the Corporate Human Resources Director. With a few exceptions, the Human Resources people had not come up "through the ranks" and usually had limited actual hands-on retail experience. Also with few exceptions, the Human Resources Coordinators were looked at almost as spies from corporate and not fully trusted by store management. There was also a turf war waged between Corporate Human Resources and Operations. This came to a head about halfway through my time in B&R.  Tom, the Vice President of Operations decided that the position of store level Human Resources Coordinator would be eliminated and replaced by a second Assistant Store Director, who would be responsible for human resources.  Donna was implacably opposed to this, but it went forward anyway. This resulted in two related problems. You had some Human Resources Coordinators applying for Assistant Store Director positions, thinking that it was the same job with a different title, when in reality the second Assistant Store Director was responsible for Human Resources and several "center store" departments. Most of these people had no retail or department management experience. The other problem was Assistant Store Directors suddenly being in charge of human resources with no previous experience. Dan, the first Assistant Store Director to be be thrust into this role asked for help from corporate HR, but received none. Donna, the Human Resources Director, forbade any Human Resources Coordinators from helping him, setting him up for failure. It didn't help that at the same time Ron, the Operations VP's assistant, was embedded in the store and mandating how much time Dan could spend in each of his new roles. 

The worst was the lack of coordination at the corporate level. The Triumvirate at the top consisted of Pat Raybould, company President, Tom, Vice President of Operations, and Larry, whose title escapes me, but who was in charge of the various department directors. One of the three would come into the store, walk around, make some observations that required you to reorder your priorities and create extra work. An hour later another of the three would stop by and tell you something different, often contradicting what the other one had told you! When Pat's father, Russ, was still alive, he was an additional factor, often just yelling about some minor issue. Of the three, Larry usually made the most sense, but he was obsessed with dress code -- hair style, jeans versus dress pants, tattoos, facial hair. It was considered good news when all three of them showed up together, because at least we'd get one non-contradictory set of instructions. 

The way things were done encouraged a culture where no one really knew what was expected of them, since the rule book was constantly shifting.

Workin' Man - Part XXVIII - Loss Prevention

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 While I've got my time at the state on hold until after I retire, I thought I'd revisit some specific categories of previous jobs. One of the departments at B&R Stores was the Loss Prevention Department, originally known as "Security". Like most of the B&R top dogs in the early days, the head of Loss Prevention was a friend of B&R founder Russ Raybould, who kinda-sorta was qualified. The qualifications of Loss Prevention Director Bob was that he had been a guard at the State Penitentiary. If you have access to an image of "Boss Hogg" from the old television show The Dukes of Hazzard, then, minus the white western hat you know exactly what Bob looked like. Up through the nineties, retail stores weren't as concerned about lawsuits from alleged shoplifters, so the job was much more physical back then. Not for portly Bob, but his crew were a bunch of cowboys. 

Since catching shoplifters was the low hanging fruit of loss prevention, that's what they focussed on. They would wander around the stores on the lookout for thieves. One Loss Prevention Officer has a unique approach. He had thinning white hair, and looked older than his fortyish years. He would hobble around the store with a walker, waiting to spot a shoplifter and would spring into action, using his skill as a judo black belt to subdue any resistance. Most of the Loss Prevention crew just seemed to view it as an easy part-time job where they could wander around the store for a few hours, or sit in the camera room watching security video. The fact that they were outside the in-store chain of command imbued many of the them with an outsized sense of their own importance. They didn't answer to the store director, and their own boss was never on site with them. A few of them spent their shifts flirting with the high school and college girls who made up a lot of the second shift staff. When I asked that one particular Romeo refrain from talking to the female employees when they were supposed to be worked he arrogantly lectured me that he was "working sources" or some other pseudo-cop bullshit. The same guy was caught lurking in the corner of the cutting room of the meat department and when challenged by the meat cutter told him to mind his own business. I threw him out of the store. 

One night while I was working the swing shift at the Cornhusker Super Saver I couldn't find our Loss Prevention guy. The clerk in the Spirits Department, where he had last been seen, told me that he had left at 6:15, which was about a half hour earlier. I went upstairs to check out his sign in sheet and saw that he has signed out at 7:00, which was still 15 minutes in the future! I also noted that next to the time were my initials! He was fired the next day. 

During my last year at the Van Dorn Russ's Carl, the guy who had succeeded Bob aka "Boss Hogg" as the LP Director, was always doing stings, which he called "audits". There was the ever popular sending in a minor to buy alcohol, but a new one popped up one weekend. The "mission" was to have a Loss Prevention walk into areas in the store where non-employees weren't supposed to be and see if anyone stopped them. This particular afternoon I started get calls that a creepy looking guy was walking into back rooms and just staring. When asked what he wanted he would simply walk away. When challenged by a manager he flashed his little tin Loss Prevention badge. I called Carl to complain and received a condescending lecture.

I wonder if these guys ever actually prevented any loss. 

Christians Battlin' Over Popes

Papal elections seem to flush a lot of the anti-Catholic prejudice out of the bushes. They say they're simply pointing out the unbiblical nature of much of Catholic doctrine and practice, but the vitriol appears to be reserved exclusively for Catholics, and not fellow Protestants who, it could be argued, are equally unbiblical. (I'm not talking about legitimate criticism of the Catholic hierarchy for covering up pedophilia among the clergy, or the other abuses by the church or in its name, just doctrinal disagreements). I'm going to limit today's thoughts to the office of the papacy and whether or not it's biblical. 

There's a few verses in the Gospel of Matthew (which I will quote shortly) which the Catholics claim establish Peter as the leader of the church and imply that he will have successors who will fill the same role. Protestants have a differing interpretation. There are a number of possibilities:

1. Jesus didn't exist, so it makes no difference
2. Jesus thought that the end of the world was coming soon, so there's no way he was engaged in succession planning and the whole section was added later
3. Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon (amuse yourselves by going down the dispensationalist rabbit hole) but this section was added later to support the evolving reality of Bishops of Rome as the top leaders of the church
4. Jesus didn't think the world was ending soon and was quoted accurately -- and was engaged in succession planning (basically the Catholic position)
5. Jesus was quoted accurately but was really saying that he, Jesus, was the rock on which the church would be built (basically the Protestant position)

Since Protestants, at least the more fundamentalist flavors, believe that the Bible doesn't contain errors, or that sections were added by unauthorized hands, they're stuck with the text as it is. 

Matthew 16:18-19 New International Version

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

The text looks pretty clear, although the Greek word for "Peter" is not the exact same word as "rock" (The Greek word that is translated "Peter" basically means "rock" or "stone"). Let's substitute "Rock" for "Peter": "And I tell you that you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church...". It's even clearer when you construct it like that. And that next phrase: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. -- it seems inarguable that Jesus is naming Peter as his successor. And that's what the Catholics believe it means. But wait! The Protestants disagree! 

The main Protestant argument against Peter as a Pope is presented here in a quotation from Oswald J. Smith:

The Greek word for Peter is ‘petros,’ meaning ‘a little stone.’  The word for rock is ‘petra,’ meaning ‘The Rock.’   What Jesus said was, ‘I will build my Church on The Rock.’  He himself was The Rock.  He never said He would build His Church on Peter, ‘a little stone.’  That would be too faulty a foundation.  In 1 Peter 2:5-8, Peter himself speaks of believers as stones and of Jesus as a rock.  So, in Eph. 2:19-21, Jesus is the Corner Stone, the Foundation.  The Church, therefore, is built not on Peter or his successors but on Jesus Christ Himself—The Rock.

I was exposed to this argument many years ago, and I believed it, mainly because the minister who related it sounded like he knew what he was talking about. But it all rests upon making a distinction between"petros" and "petra". I'm no Greek scholar, but I do know that word endings are much more significant in Greek than they are in English. Petra, translated "rock" is, in Greek, a feminine noun. Giving Simon (Peter's original name) a feminine nickname doesn't sound likely to me, so the "os" ending made Petros a masculine name. There's also the matter of the language that Jesus was speaking - it wasn't Greek. The word translated "Peter", as well as the word translated "rock" are both kepha in Aramaic, the common language in Jewish lands. The Protestant argument, like a lot of attempts to make the Bible coherent, twists logic into a pretzel and makes language and grammar sit up and beg. 

This doesn't mean that I think that Matthew 16:18-19 is legitimate succession planning. Even if Jesus existed (I lean toward the existence of someone upon whom the biblical Jesus is based) the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus as preaching that everyone should get themselves right before God because the world would be ending very, very soon. 

As I said in another article, there is nothing in canonical scripture to indicate that Peter was the sole leader, or even that he was ever in Rome. Paul is documented as having much greater influence in building the church through missionary activity and James, Jesus' brother, is implied to have been the leader in Jerusalem. It seems likely to me that Matthew 16:18-19 was a later addition to lend support to the evolving reality on the ground which had the Bishops of Rome asserting themselves as first among equals, if not absolute rulers of the growing church, and retconning an unbroken line of bishops stretching back to Peter. It makes sense that creating the idea that someone was spiritually in charge was a way to reign in the various sects and the contradictory "scriptures" (at least more contradictory than the ones we ended up with) that were all competing for attention. It looks at odds with how things operated in The Acts of the Apostles, but how long could that "all things in common" small-scale churches in people's homes continued? Things change and evolve to fit changing circumstances, and somebody cooked up some quotable quotes to baptize what they already decided to do. 

Granted, there is no scriptural model for the top-down hierarchical structure with a Pope at the top. But it's in The Bible now, and the Protestants can either accept it or accept that the Bible isn't inerrant. 

Battlin' Christians

The death of Pope Francis and the upcoming election of his replacement has instigated a flood of social media chatter about Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general. Mostly the conversations revolve around how many Christians think other Christians aren't really Christians. The broad strokes come down to Protestants thinking Catholics are idolaters, worshipping Mary and the saints, and the Catholics smugly believing that the Protestants are all rebels, or possibly heretics, definitely Johnny-Come-Latelys. Catholics largely pin their superiority complex on the belief that the Catholic Church was the original church and that all others are offshoots. The Protestants claim that Catholic belief and practice contradicts scripture, which they claim that they follow -- even when various denominations disagree with each other. 

Even if we accept that Matthew 16:18 is referring to Jesus installing Peter as the leader upon which the church will be built, there is no evidence that this actually happened. I'm not even referring to secular history, but to the New Testament books that record what went on in the early years of the church. The Acts of the Apostles starts out focussing on Peter and his fellow apostles' ministry in Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, but about halfway through switches the spotlight to Paul, someone who hadn't met Jesus and starts his preaching before ever meeting one of the apostles who had. There is also no reference in scripture to bishops who oversee a whole city, but to a more collegial system akin to a board of deacons. Evidently the system did eventually evolve into a single bishop model, as some of the apocryphal books make reference to it. 

There is every indication that the decades following the death of Jesus saw multiple strains of Christianity, some which would barely be recognizable as Christian today. The Bible didn't yet exist as a source, so various groups of followers were left to create their own belief systems and pictures of who and what they thought Jesus was and what following him consisted of. This should be expected -- we take for granted today's instant worldwide communication, but this was more than a millennium before the printing press. Any standards disseminated by the leaders would be in laboriously handwritten, or depended on personal visits. 

One of these groups was founded by Marcion, who believed that the God of Jesus and the God of the Hebrew scriptures were two different deities. His canon of scripture included only the gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles. For years Marcionite Christians were the dominant form of Christianity in many cities. Eventually the form of Christianity that became the Catholic Church became the overwhelming majority, and since history (including the Bible) is written by the victors, competing Christianities were tarred as heretics and false teachers. It's easy to look back 2000 years and see how some of these factions taught things that didn't line up with the Bible, but there was no Bible. The writings that make up our New Testament took decades if not centuries to become widely available. And the decision regarding what would be included in the Bible and considered Holy Scripture was made by the winning faction. It's not difficult to imagine a very different Bible if one of the other sects had prevailed. 

By Constantine's reign there was an entity which was recognizable as the ancestor of today's Catholic Church, but it still was far from obvious what form it should take. During that time there were five Patriarchs -- think of them as Super Bishops (the position of Cardinal hadn't been invented yet) who presided over the churches in Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. Due to Rome and Constantinople being the capital cities of the empire, the patriarchs of those cities enjoyed the greatest prestige and the greatest influence. The Bishop of Rome at some point began to claim Matthew 16:18 as the scriptural basis for his position as leader of the entire church. The Patriarch of Constantinople disagreed. By the 600's the other three Patriarchs were in Muslim lands and therefore didn't figure into any power plays. For the most part the Eastern and Western churches were in sync on doctrine, but began to drift apart regarding ritual. But once the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other, they didn't need to take the other's opinion into consideration any longer. By this time the retconning of the early church as an unbroken line of leaders starting with Peter had become ingrained. Is it possible that Peter really was the leader of undisputed "true" church, and that there was an unbroken line of successors? Maybe, but I think it's equally likely that what we see in the Fourth Century was a result of several centuries of evolution in faith and practice, with competition for souls and power among various factions. Once Christianity became legal, the Catholic hierarchy had legal authority, as well as spiritual, to back up their views.  

Despite this surface unity, there were many so-called heresies that sprung up, mostly about the nature of Jesus. One thing is evident from reading the Bible as an historian and not a theologian is that the Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus' message as one of how to act while the Pauline epistles and other New Testament books focus on what to believe. This led to heresies and schisms over deep theological issues, and relegating Christian practice to prayer and ritual, rather than to loving your neighbor and doing acts of charity. One "heresy" that had remarkable staying power was put forth by a clergyman named Arius and involved (as most of the arguments did) the nature of Jesus. The Arian teaching was condemned at the Council of Nicea, but persisted until the 800's, mostly among the Germanic people. It finally withered away when Charlemagne decided to hitch his wagon to Orthodox Catholicism. 

When the Protestant Reformation began, its leaders didn't at first reject the Catholic Church or its theology, although they gradually moved away from the idea that truth was determined by the church leaders' interpretation, and began to encourage ordinary people to read the Bible and defer to scripture first. Their position was that the Catholic Church had moved away from the ideals of the early church and that by going back to scripture Christians could recreate the atmosphere of godliness that existed back then. What they didn't consider was that the scriptures that had come down to them were the product of the embryonic Catholic Church. The early church didn't have the Bible. If they had any gospels or epistles, different cities had access to different versions. The Protestants, by claiming to obey only scripture and not human authority, were putting their stamp of approval on the Catholic version of what Truth ought to be!

Catholic doctrine is that scriptural interpretation should be filtered through the clergy, especially the head of the church -- the Pope. As mentioned earlier, there were competing versions of Christianity in the early days, each with its own epistles, gospels and acts of the apostles. Most falsely claimed to have been written by one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. (None of the canonical Gospels claim authorship within their texts, several letters attributed to Paul most certainly weren't written by him, and several other epistles attributed to Peter or John are without a doubt pseudonymous). The early church leadership claimed the authority to decide which of these numerous tracts and letters were legitimate, and how the canonical ones should be interpreted. This is related to the doctrine of Apostolic Succession, which posits that Jesus taught the Twelve, who taught others, who then taught others in an unbroken chain. The assumption was that the teaching originated with Jesus and was therefore perfect, and was perfect transmitted from successor to successor. As the successors of the Apostles, and therefore of Jesus, the idea was that they were uniquely qualified to determine Biblical Truth. And they had a point. Although anyone who has played a game of "telephone" knows that information doesn't remain intact as it passes from one person to another -- someone had to sift through all myriad contradictory "scriptures" and decide what was legitimate. The idea that anyone who had access to a Bible could determine the Truth hasn't led to a return to first century paradise, with every ploughman able to discern the will of God, but to hundreds, even thousands, of competing contradictory versions of Christianity. And they all "know" that they're right. 

Some of the divisions aren't even about doctrine. There are some denominations that are organized around an "episcopal" model, with bishops overseeing large areas; some are a congregationally organized, with a board of elders or presbyters making all the decisions, still others are independent, led by a charismatic leader. Denominations split and regroup, local churches change denominations, and individuals hop from church to church. You hear people who have been raised in one church describing a change in their church as "becoming a Christian", as if they weren't really a Christian before. And they all can all point to something in the Bible to justify their opinions (except the Catholics, they just say they've been around the longest). The rise of Christian Nationalism has exacerbated the problem, although the alliances have changed. Conservative Catholics and Protestant Fundamentalists have made common cause against liberal Catholics and mainstream Protestants and there appears to be a contest to see who can be the toughest sonofabitch around, rather than who can live like Jesus. 

Ironic that the faith supposedly based on "love thy neighbor" is usually of the opinion that their neighbor is destined for Hell.

Workin' Man - Part XXVII - Interregnum

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

"The best work-related thing that ever happened to me" was how I described the day that I was fired. I never understood why they had me work the whole day getting trained for something that I wouldn't need...since they were going to fire me! I called Carl, the head of Loss Prevention, so he could be present when I cleaned out my office, and headed home, feeling like a great weight had been lifted. After taking the weekend off I started my job search in earnest.

From the Monday following Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve I worked a seasonal part-time job as a delivery helper with UPS.  It wasn't much, but it brought in some income while I was searching. After my first day every muscle in my body ached. I had twisted my knee and had to wear a knee brace the whole rest of my time with UPS. I had serious doubts whether I would even be able to walk and be able to work the second day. I was on-call, so I never knew for sure when I would be working. I'd usually get a call around 10:00am if I was going to be working, but no call at all if I wasn't being called in. For most of the four weeks I worked on a delivery route in the Havelock area, working around four hours a day. The last week or so I helped on a rural route near Denton and worked 8+ hour days. The driver on the Havelock route was very quiet. He hardly said two words each time I worked with him. The driver on my last week was a lot more talkative. He would start the day complaining about how the truck was loaded, or about his supervisors and then say "fuck it, we have a lot of work to do", and off we'd go. 

UPS had specific instructions about how we were to carry boxes. They also would send inspectors around to follow us and observe if we were in compliance. We were supposed hold boxes in front of us, which I found hard on my back, so I would hoist them up on my shoulder, which was against policy. I was caught and got a talking to. My driver also was reprimanded for letting me do it. We had a lot of dogs in rural Denton. My driver would distract the dogs with a treat while I ran up to the houses. He always had a steady supply of snacks that he would share with me.

UPS was very clear that we would not receive our final paycheck until we turned our uniform in. We were issued brown pants and shirt, a brown coat and a winter hat, all with the UPS logo. On the day before my last day I was told by the dispatcher that I had to turn in my uniform at the end of my shift, which meant changing in the truck! My driver and I agreed that I should just wear my regular clothes and the UPS hat. They also didn't allow any facial hair other than a moustache. I had grown a beard after being fired from B&R, so I had to shave. I started growing it back during my last week. My driver said that if any inspectors said anything he'd swear it was five o'clock shadow. 

We were by no means living paycheck-to-paycheck, but the amount of money in the bank would not last indefinitely. My 401(k) was available, which we decided would be withdrawn in an emergency. A related issue was that with the loss of employment, I also lost my insurance coverage. Since we had reached our out-of-pocket maximum we elected to utilize COBRA coverage through the end of the year and switch to coverage through the PPACA marketplace in January. Job hunting became my full-time job. I sent out a lot of applications throughout the month of November. Around the beginning of December I started getting called in for interviews. I interviewed at a few retail stores, including Walmart and Fresh Thyme. I'm glad I didn't get hired at Walmart, not because of the horror stories that one hears about them, but because of the schedule. The days off for the position I was applying for rotated. You would work four days, then two days off. So Week One would be Monday-Thursday, Friday and Saturday off, work on Sunday. Week Two would be Monday-Wednesday, Thursday & Friday off, work Saturday and Sunday. Week Three schedule would be work Monday and Tuesday, Off Wednesday and Thursday, work Friday-Sunday. And so on, your two days off rotating backward through the week. This would give me only two Saturdays and two Sundays off in every six week cycle and only one complete weekend off. With the wedding officiating business needing me primarily on Saturdays, this wouldn't work. It was difficult enough at Russ's when my promotion to store director meant working Saturdays. I was offered a job as a merchandiser for the local Coca-Cola distributor. I accepted that one, but backed out after receiving an offer for a less physical job. I had applied for several positions in state government. I was called back for one -- a Fiscal Compliance Analyst with the Nebraska Department of Revenue. 

My interview with the Department of Revenue was scheduled for a time when I was on call with UPS, so I can to call them and let them know that I would not be available. The dispatcher was very annoyed, insisting that it was an on-call job and that I was breaking my agreement with them. I pointed out that (1) I sat around every morning, my day on hold while I waited for them to call me, which didn't happen every day and (2) UPS was a temporary job and I sure wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to secure permanent, full-time employment when I had no guarantee that I would even be called in that day. I thought that my attitude would affect my schedule, but it continued as normal, my hours even increasing the final six working days. 

I went in for the interview, and received a job offer a week later. The job was supposed to start on December 26th, but was changed to January 11th, since the person who would be doing the training would be on vacation. On January 11th I started what would be almost nine and a half years working for the State of Nebraska. 

As of the day I'm typing this I'm still with the Department of Revenue, but will be retiring on June 13, 2025. I'll detail my nine and a half years with them after retirement.