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 

 Remote work on a large scale was approved in April 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic. I was given equipment and remote 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 some of the time. My group was only required to come in once per month. Department-wide, productivity did not suffer, and many of us 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, but there was no getting around it. When I was promoted to Senior Agent in the Refund Claims 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 if you were feeling under the weather, 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. 

One huge change was paperwork reduction. Even though we all had computers, and the claims we were working often came to us online, we still printed everything out. Multiple copies of forms had to be signed and distributed to various stakeholders. Once most of us decamped to our domiciles however, this couldn't be maintained. At first a handful of people would come in and print out everything and walk it over to its destination, but after a few months we had successfully transitioned to doing all of our work online. The savings on thousands of reams of paper every quarter should have been a legitimate reason to continue the remote work option. But...

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 judge 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. These holds were temporary until the union could goth rough the process of protesting the change. 

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, but 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. 

This change resulted in an exodus of experienced personnel. People had gotten used to working from home, and there were many people who were hired with the understanding that remote work was an option. In the Incentives Group three experienced auditors left to take jobs outside the department. Several more quit within a few months. This was taking place throughout the department and positions were remaining vacant for months at a time. 

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 only 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 had been 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 retired, 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 or 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 didn't know what direction the micromanaging was taking, or which informal benefits would go next, but with the difficulty everywhere in staying fully staffed, I can't say that these are good ideas. But I was retiring soon, as I said...

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXIV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXX - From The Frying Pan

I'm skipping over the years 1983 to 1989, since I wasn't involved with The Way during that time. Even though I was still very much "Waybrained", I wasn't under the daily influence of their way of thinking. I still bought into Way assumptions and theological conclusions like speaking in tongues, the non-divinity of Jesus, the "law" of believing and all that. But beliefs, no matter how non-mainstream, do not a cult make, it's the behavior of its adherents and the influence of its leaders and we were not in touch with any Way leaders at that time. But while we were gone there was a lot going on in The Way. 

In 1980 Victor Wierwille, the founder and president of The Way "retired" and appointed the Director of the Way Corps, Craig Martindale, as his successor. The handing over of authority was a big deal. For many years Wierwille had encouraged the rank and file to view him as "The Man of God For Our Time" in the mold of the Apostle Paul, Moses or Elijah. So the presidency of The Way was not simply a corporate title and his role as the teacher of The Way's foundational class, Power for Abundant Living (PFAL) was not simply that of an academic or scholar. No, Wierwille was ordained, anointed, chosen by God to bring new light regarding the Bible to our generation. I don't believe he ever came out and said it overtly, but he certainly allowed the sentiment to proliferate. Therefore the passing of the mantle to a new generation was literally the passing of a mantle. An elaborate ceremony was conducted in October 1982 (the supposed 40th Anniversary of The Way), with enough pomp and circumstance that would not be out of place in a royal coronation, Martindale had an actual mantle placed on his shoulders, was anointed with oil and took a "salt covenant" and had Wierwille and the other two Trustees lay hands upon him. Within three years Wierwille was dead.

The early to mid eighties were the peak years of The Way's numbers and influence. There were Way fellowships in all 50 states, including flourishing branches in the major population centers. There was a Way presence of over 40 countries outside the United States. The United Kingdom was a major center of Way outreach and had a European Way Corps training center located in Scotland. The central African nation of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) rivalled the U.S. in the number of active Way fellowships. Things were looking good in Wayworld. But looks could be deceiving.

The choice of Martindale as the new president of The Way was not a universally popular choice. The hierarchy was no different from any other organization, secular or religious, in that it was populated by many ambitious men (women too, but The Way was basically a patriarchal organization). Despite the trend toward leaders in any capacity higher than Twig level being Way Corps graduates, the internal operations of Way Corps training were a virtual black box to most Way adherents. Even among the Way Corps, once graduating, they were no longer effectively under the day-to-day authority of the Way Corps Director. The Twig coordinators answered to Branch coordinators who answered to State Coordinators and up the chain to the Board of Trustees. Many men who had attained high rank in the organization surely thought that they should have been called to be the next "Man of God for Our Time". Most non-Way Corps didn't even know who Craig Martindale was and had been speculating about which of the more visible and more popular leaders would be the next president. While Wierwille was still alive the fact that he supported Martindale kept everything in line.

When Wierwille died all Hell broke loose. Wierwille had been the glue holding it all together. His pronouncements had always been beyond question and his decisions could not be gainsaid. Many of the top leaders during this time had come to be involved in The Way when teenagers or college students and saw Wierwille as a wise father figure, while Martindale was just one of them, lacking the esteem that most felt toward their "Father in The Word". The focus of the unrest was Chris Geer, Wierwille's former bodyguard and driver who had been assigned to the directorship of the European Way Corps. He authored a paper called "The Passing of a Patriarch" where he criticized Martindale and his fellow Trustees and claimed to be the recipient of Wierwille's last words. He never attempted to stage a coup and take over as leader, but he did undermine the confidence that people had in the de jure leaders. Little by little state and local leaders began to look to him for guidance and direction. Other leaders began to speak up and point fingers as well. Some in support of Martindale, some in support of Geer, some completely independent of both. 

At some point Martindale had had enough. He sent a letter out to all active Way Corps leaders demanding that they decide who they would be loyal to — himself, as the de jure leader of The Way, or to Chris Geer. Many of my fellow ex-Wayfers would disagree, but in retrospect this was a reasonable stance to take. Many of these leaders were still on The Way payroll and were supposedly within the Way hierarchy, yet were taking their marching orders from a technically illegitimate source. Martindale's choices in reality were limited to cutting loose those who wouldn't follow him, or succumbing to the pressure and resigning himself. Any of those leaders who felt that following Geer was the right, godly thing to do should have openly done so. Unfortunately for Martindale his letter did more harm than good. Even leaders who were standing in support of him were offended at what they categorized as a demand for a "loyalty oath". Eighty percent of leaders and rank and file members ended their affiliation with The Way at that time. Former leaders, including Geer, started their own offshoot ministries (often derided as "sticks", in contrast to "twigs" by those who stayed with the original organization) with many of the Way groups outside the United States breaking away as well. After things began to settle down Martindale dug in his heels. He taught several seminars giving his spin on what had happened, painting it as a battle between the forces of godliness and Devil-inspired evil. He described those who left as becoming a "grease spot by midnight" for leaving the "household of God" and those who remained as "the faithful remnant". If Wierwille's approach was to present himself as the wise and loving father and grandfather, controlling through cajoling and encouragement, even while ruling with an iron fist and berating his intimates behind the scenes, Martindale went into full-on dictator mode. Wierwille in my opinion knew he was running a con, and did what he needed to do to retain influence and power; Martindale believed his own press clippings and really believed that he had been anointed to be God's representative. This would involve a lot of yelling and a lot of overt control.

This was the situation in The Way when we decided to get back involved after an absence of almost eight years.

Start from the beginning: Part I

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 these 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. 

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 step up 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. I was valued when management needed me to do something for them, but not when I expected something from them. 

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 to my performance review and pointed out that I was already doing almost all of the requirements of the position. Key responsibilities included training and being a resource for newer employees. They told me that they would check with Stacey, who was the executive office director who oversaw our area, and get back to me. I expected that I would hear back reasonably quickly, but the weeks and months passed without any feedback. 

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. Yeah, I had questions! What about the reclassification that I brought up three months ago? They told me that Stacey did not approve it because 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 — surely the reclassification denial had been handed down shortly after it had been presented. Why did I have to ask for an update? Why did it take three months? I figured that there wasn't anything I could do about it, and although irritated, was ready to move on. 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 left our work group to take a promotion to Senior Agent 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 Senior Agent position in the other work group, this meant that there was now an opening as a Senior Agent in an area that had quite a bit of overlap with the Incentives Group. 

The group which had the Senior Agent opening had been split off from the Incentives Group a few years earlier. There was quite a bit of overlap of work responsibilities between the two groups, although they each had their own unique focuses. There was enough similarity that I was confident that I could transition to the new position fairly easily. I had heard some negatives about how that group was run. It 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. This was my main worry about moving — that I would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. But I found out that she was leaving the department and her position eliminated! 

I applied for and was offered the position to start in December 2022. I never found out who I was competing with for the position, but it was evident that my background as a manager before coming to work for the Department of Revenue, in addition to my experience in Incentives, was a factor in being offered the position. The move, however, was not without its bumps.

Every State job classification's had a 40-step pay scale. Each "step" was 1% greater than the previous step. Starting pay was Step 1. Usually, if you moved from one position to another your new pay rate was Step 1 of that position's pay scale. My pay rate as an Incentives Examiner was already higher than the starting pay rate for the Senior Agent position, so I was offered the promotion with no pay increase! I refused to accept the promotion without a rate increase. I don't recall for sure what step on the examiner scale I was at, but let's say it was Step 8. I asked to be paid at the Step 8 rate for the Senior Agent position, which they eventually agreed to. 

Senior Agent positions in the Department of Revenue have a lot of supervisory responsibility, but are not classified as supervisors. This means no meetings with the top brass, no requirement to conduct performance reviews, and no responsibility to handle disciplinary actions. I was getting to do what I loved most about management: training, teaching and coaching, without all the administrative nonsense that I disliked. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXIII

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, putting it at the top of my to-do list. 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 correctly. 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 be jumped through 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. (I talked to some of my old team around six months after I retired, due to various reasons, they were back to only reviewing claims that were approaching the 180-day statutory deadline)  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 off 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 union 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. 

Start with Part I

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 as 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 came up through the ranks and 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 and even actively undermining the process. 

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 and unnecessarily 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 (with my manager's blessing) 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 to my proposal. 

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 we were able to substantially reduce the number of days that a claim was in the department waiting to be approved. 

One of the things that made my time in RO a pleasant experience was that I had the full support of my manager as well as the chain of command all the way up to the executive offices. I never fully understood, however, the resistance I received from my former manager and her team in the Incentives Group. Changes that I made were subject to review when the work of other Senior Agents were not. My replacement after I retired was not subject to having her approvals reviewed by a manager or auditor, as mine were for months after my promotion. Despite all the pushback, I was given a lot of freedom within my own work group to get things done as I saw fit. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXV

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 considered to be superior to the examiners, no matter the level of knowledge and 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  effectively was 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 existed in a state of perpetual simmering anger. To describe her as continually mad at the world doesn't do justice to the level of rage that constantly radiated from 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 towers 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. 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. On another occasion 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.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXIX - Sex, Cults and Rock & Roll

Before I was branded as a failure by Way leadership I was being groomed for bigger and better things. At the time, Nebraska had a fairly healthy Way presence. Not as numerically entrenched as New York, but a branch of seven twig fellowships was well established. I was given the position of Assistant Twig Coordinator for the group that met at our home, mentored directly by Carol D., a Way Corps graduate. Within a short period of time we had gathered enough people to run our own Power For Abundant Living (PFAL) Class. I was appointed co-coordinator of the class with Mary H, a Way Corps student who was on Leave of Absence (LOA) Status due to missing tuition payments. (This was fairly common; most people who were released from the Way Corps were kicked out for financial reasons; it was rare indeed for someone to be separated or even have their application rejected, for any other reason). It was a heady time. My performance as Class Coordinator was a success, and I was (I thought) on the fast track to leadership. 

After a few months, Ronnie S, our State Coordinator, had the brilliant idea that we should split each of the twigs into two. This was supposedly because our numbers had grown so fast and the added centers would cause our numbers to grow exponentially. I found out much later, that this was merely a ploy to exaggerate Ronnie's success at outreach. He spun off a portion of the branch into a "twig area" (basically a mini-branch) led by Carol D, the Way Corps grad, when new leadership came in the following year, it quickly became apparent that most of these fellowships existed only on paper. One of the splits was my own fellowship. Four of us, me, my roommate Tim, Pat N, a single mother of two boys and Beth, and brand-new PFAL grad, were to form the new twig, meeting in Pat's home in a trailer court on the west side of Lincoln. I was terrified of the new responsibility. I had been a Twig Coordinator before, in New York, but back then I had inherited a large, vibrant, functioning group; here I was put in charge of three other people and expected to shepherd the growth myself. At first it went pretty well. Next door to Pat there was another single mom with two teenage boys, living with her mother. We signed all four up for the next PFAL class, basically doubling our group size. Carol's twig provided another four people and we ran our second PFAL class, again with me running the show. 

Here's where I'm going to divert a bit from my own personal story and talk about The Way's attitude toward sex. At the very least, it was confusing. They didn't frown on pre-marital sex. Weirdly though, they did frown on unmarried couples living together. To clarify, people who were strictly roommates, like in WOW or Way Home situations, was okay, but if you were "a couple" and presumably having sex, that was referred to as "shacking up" or "playing house" and was strongly discouraged. I am aware of several instances where a couple was living together, but in order to get married in a Way ceremony, they had to make separate living arrangements until the wedding. I can't think of any scenario where this makes sense. 

This is something that I will get into in more depth in later installments, but in the higher echelons of Way leadership, infidelity was rampant and sexual abuse was not unheard of. Although how much this filtered down to the lower levels depended a lot on the personality of the local leadership, their own views of sex and how much control they could hold over you using sex. Ronnie S, our local head honcho appeared somewhat morally conservative; although there was a lot of extramarital sex going on among the younger Way adherents he either didn't know it was going on, or only chose to address it if he could use it to exert influence over you. 

There hadn't been many opportunities for sex while I was a WOW. I personally steered away from romantic or sexual relationships with roommates for the same reasons that workplace romances are often a bad idea — once they end, that person is still right there, every day. And there just weren't that many other options, especially since we were being actively persecuted in Sidney! When I arrived in Lincoln, with many choices for pairing off with young, attractive women and most important to a cult member, like minded in regard to Way doctrine, I was, to put it politely, rarin' to go. But, back to the leadership arc. 

Not long after I was given the responsibility of running a new twig fellowship, I was moved from one Way Home to another across town, and made Way Home Coordinator. This was a bit odd, since there was a twig fellowship running out of this Way Home and I wasn't going to run it — I was still the coordinator of the group at Pat's house on the other side of Lincoln. My new residence was definitely not within walking distance of the location of the fellowship I was coordinating, and I didn't have a car. I borrowed my new roommate's motorcycle on occasion, but due to the distance, I spent more time over at Pat's house than at my own home. Mike and Rosemarie (the same Rosemarie from Sidney and Kearney) and their twig coordinator Mary did their thing and I did mine. This move took place in February. 

It was around late April or May when I was informed that due to my not meeting financial obligations I would not be entering the Way Corps. Also around this time, the four people that we had signed up for and graduated from PFAL decided that they no longer wanted to be involved in The Way. Leadership, as I had stated in the previous chapter, had decided that I was a failure. My fellowship was dissolved, and I no longer had any leadership position. Around this time, it came to the attention of Ronnie S that I had been involved in a relationship with Pat N. Everything that had gone "wrong" was blamed on this relationship, and things going "wrong" was presented as evidence that the relationship was the cause. 

Seeing that my future as an up and coming Way leader wasn't going to happen, Pat and I decided that we should get married. Ronnie refused to officiate the ceremony and we got married by a judge at the County-City Building. We were nominally still part of The Way, and still participated, but we were "tainted" and our presence was only barely tolerated. The owner of the Way Home I lived in was a Way person who lived out of state. I got her permission to continue living there after Pat and I got married, which Ronnie was furious about, since he had already assigned a new bunch of Way Home people there. But Ronnie was reassigned that August and a new state leader came in. 

Then I got fired from my job and ended up four months behind on my rent. 

You would think that a Christian community would support one of their own when bad times hit. But the way The Way viewed things was that bad things happened due to your lack of "believing" — so it was my fault, evidence of some spiritual malady that was causing my problems. Instead of help, I received lectures until one day I lost my temper at the new leader's wife and we didn't attend another Way function for seven years. We moved out of the home that we rented from a Way person and moved on with our lives.

Except we didn't. 

Despite not being actively involved in The Way, Waybrain was still very strong with us. We had internalized many of the cultish assumptions and ended up back in their arms in 1990, finding a Way that, if possible, had become even more cultish.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXX

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXVIII - Apprentice Way Corps

I've lived in Lincoln Nebraska since August 1981, 45 years as of when I am writing this blog post. I'm often asked why I moved from New York to Nebraska and I often just lie. At least I did until recently when I started just telling people that I came here as part of a cult. It's made for interesting conversations! 

Back when I was actively involved in The Way I would say that I was sent here as part of a missionary program, people understood that. After I left, more often than not I would tell people that I travelled around a lot in my youth and settled down in Lincoln when I met my first wife and started a family. Sometimes I would say that I was in a cult. It all depended on who I was talking to and whether I felt they really wanted to know or were just making conversation. After my divorce I shied away from a relationship with a woman whom I liked a lot and thought I had a lot in common with because she couldn't understand how I had "been so stupid" to get involved in a cult. 

Towards the end of my year long commitment to participate in the WOW Ambassador program I made two decisions that in retrospect were idiotic decisions. Despite the utter mess that my year as a WOW had been, I (1) Decided to apply to the Way Corps and (2) Sign up for a year to live in a Way Home, an in-state program overseen by The Way's Limb (i.e. state) Coordinator. The Way Corps was The Way's supposed leadership training program. Virtually every level of Way leadership was a graduate of The Way Corps, rather than rising up organically in the community. At the time Way Corps training was a four year process. The first year, called the Apprentice Year, took place wherever you happened to live. You were encouraged to take on leadership roles: running twig fellowships, coordinating classes, and being active in local Way events. You were also expected to get your tuition together, either by saving it yourself, or, as was quite common, getting "sponsorships" (later called "spiritual partners") to help defray the costs. (more on that later) The Way Home program was similar to the WOW program with a few exceptions: you could work full time if desired, you were not prohibited from leaving your assigned area, and your witnessing time was up to you. Other than that, you were at the beck and call of Way leadership and were expected to put the needs of The Way before your own. 

The Way Home where I lived for the first half of the Way year (August-February) was in a older neighborhood. It was a three bedroom home with a finished basement. The basement had another bedroom, a family room and a laundry room. My roommates were Carol, 28 years old and a graduate of the Way Corps; Tim and Joan, both early twenties, who had been WOWs in Nebraska the previous year and were Apprentice Corps as I was; and Lisa, a senior in high school. I was assigned to be the Assistant Twig Coordinator to Carol for the fellowship that met in our home. 

In retrospect Way Corps tuition seemed ridiculously low. If I remember correctly, it was $4,000 per each year "in residence", the second and fourth years when you were at a Way property actively being "trained". $1,000 was due around 6 months before you started "in residence", the rest due at intervals during the year. But I looked up an inflation calculator online and saw that the purchasing power of a 1982 dollar is around 3 times what it is now, so in current dollars the tuition would have been around $12,000 per year. I have no idea if the tuition increased in subsequent years. To put the do-ability of coming up with this in perspective, the first full-time job I had in 1982 paid around $13,000 a year. I was tithing to The Way, so subtract $1,300 and you've got $11,700. The tuition of $4,000 would have been 34% of a typical annual wage for a non-skilled, non-professional job in those days, and most of us Way Corps candidates were in our early twenties, not college graduates and a lot of us were working part-time jobs. I have no idea if this was a reasonable amount for room and board, as well as the purported training, but it certainly was outside the realm of possibility for the typical Way kid. So the solution was sponsorships/spiritual partners. 

Sponsors would commit to contributing a set amount every month to help a Way Corps person defray the tuition costs. Some candidates had well-off friends or relatives who supported their commitment to The Way and contributed all or most of the tuition up front. Most of us had to spend time begging for money. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you take the long view) my relatives were definitely not supporting my involvement in The Way and most of my Way friends were in the same financial boat that I was. The end result was that when the first installment was due, I was a long way from $1,000 and was removed from Apprentice Corps status. 

I felt like a failure.

I was told that I was a failure.

But there's a lot more to tell about the year from August 1981 to August 1982, which I will talk about in Part XXIX.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXIX

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 positions, if I remember correctly, 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 in the dark about what I was actually applying for! The interviewers, 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 range. 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. They were right.

A week or so later I received a job offer and began my new career on January 11, 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, which was my position, was the entry level slot. 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 new examiners, 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 spots 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.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXXI

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 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 always 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.

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXX

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 

When I first wrote this I was still employed at the Nebraska Department of Revenue, so 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, 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. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXIX