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.