The first day of work, we had a rediculously long eight hours of training. Eight hours doesn't sound like a lot, but considering that they didn't actually cover anything we needed to know, I am of the opinion that it was a little on the longish side. But what the hell, what do I care, right? Im on the clock all day, and all day consists of sitting there trying desperately not to fall asleep while the people giving their "presentations" struggle to figure out how to make Powerpoint work.

Seriously. Each person that came up to the front of the giant conference room that housed all of us had varying degrees of difficulty getting their powerpoint presentation to work.

How many times had they done this? Was this the first time? How can they not have figured this shit out by now? Its not as if Powerpoint is terribly complex. It did not bode well for the job. But then, looking around the room, I could tell everyone else there was mystified at the sight of the COM-PAYOU-TOR too, so in retrospect maybe I was just expecting too much.

I can recall, all through the day, there was this large black chick to my left, who kept doing the most stereotypical things. It blew me away. I've lived long enough that I know that regardless of skin color, everyone is basically unique. People may have their own mannerisms based on where they grew up, or how their parents act, that kind of thing. It's very rare when you see somebody who conforms to a good number of stereotypes, but this chick was doing her damnedest. She was moving her head side-to-side while waggling her finger and saying things like "oh no you di'nt!" And every time they asked if everyone understood, she would inevitably not get it, so we would be treated to something else, like she was a giant "inner-city black woman" characature. "OH LORDY" she said once, throwing up her hands.

I kept waiting for one of the other black chicks in her row to slap her and say "STOP IT! Your obvious generalization of a personality is setting black women back GENERATIONS!" but they never did.

After the eight useless hours were over, we all kind of stumbled out into the light, some of us visibly waking up after being asleep for at least two of those eight hours.

In those eight hours, they covered nothing that actually had anything to do with my job. They handouts they gave us were very official and very incomplete, missing vast amounts of information. They spent several hours teaching us how to read a DLN Number, and they gave us a handout with the number seperated into its componants, but the handout had no actual labels for these componants, just the number split into sections with no accompanying text to tell us what each section was. Completely and utterly useless in all respects. Later they gave us another document that included this information, but had no data on what each section could possibly be and what it meant. For instance, I know that the first two digits of a DLN are the originating city where the document came from, but I have no idea what the possible 2-digit code is for each city. Once again, completely useless.

The longer I work there, the more I realize that this is because nobody in the IRS really knows anything for sure. So the less data you have, the better off you are, since that data can be wrong about 50% of the time.

I've also come to find out that most governmental documents are just as vague as the handouts they gave us. They'll tell you WHAT an acronym stands for, but not what it means. Or what an acronym means, but not what it stands for. I think they're intentionally vague so that nobody catches on that nobody really knows anything. Everyone is just making their best guess as to what everything means, and you can choose to go with that, or not, whatever. If it's your boss though, you better just go with it, even though all common sense tells you that what they are telling you is wrong.

The lead guy of my department, Dick seems to know what he's doing, but at the same time, he can talk for ten minutes using nothing but Acronyms. Its like talking to some dude on AOL or something. "You need to put your CPS in the DL for RAIVS and your D12s need to be SOPed into the KDs." he'll say to me, when I ask him where a particular form goes. Normally I reply "oh" and put the form in whatever box is nearby at the time. By the time it makes its long journey through the system, whoever opens the box will be controlled by a giant robotic computer that shoots lazers out its eyes and uses us all for batteries anyway, and maybe IT will be able to figure out where the goddamn thing goes.

And besides, FUCK that robot!

Our manager, before we all left the training-of-doom, made sure to tell everyone that there was the possibility of snow tomorrow, and that they should all leave a half hour early just in case, because NOBODY HAD BETTER BE LATE OR NOT SHOW UP BECAUSE IF YOU DO, THE GOVERNMENT WILL SEND NINJAS TO YOUR HOUSE THAT WILL KILL YOUR FUCKING DOG.

Well ok, I made the ninja thing up. (it was actually ninja cyborgs) but she stressed that we all needed to be there on time or horrible things would happen that none of us understood because she spoke in all acronyms, just like the lead guy.

The next day, it sure as hell did snow, and I showed up on time (though since traffic here slows to IDLE FUCKING SPEED when it snows, it took FOREVER to get there) and nobody else was there except for the Lead guy who I think lives in the back in a little hut made out of discarded document packing boxes, with only his calculator and razor sharp #2 pencil to hunt rats for food.

Our manager didn't show up for 4 hours.

Of course, the problem here is that there were like 60 people standing around who had no idea what the fuck they were supposed to do.

But again, im getting paid to stand there and be handsome, so you know, whatever.

I spent this time talking to the other people who were already working in the area I was supposed to be in. I knew that as soon as she got there, we would be assigned to whatever happened to be open at the time, and I wanted to make sure I got in one of the GOOD jobs, the jobs where you sit there and stare at the wall as you stamp 7 million sheets of paper, and thats all you do for 8 hours. And in the IRS, you better believe there are plenty of these jobs to go around.

From talking to the various people stationed around the area, I found out ANOTHER fun government fact:

Since only about 20% of all governmental jobs (at least in the IRS) are permenant, you have a lot of situations where your manager will come to you and say "Hey, due to budget cuts we decided to remove you from this department and send you to a completely other building an hour and a half away where you will do a job you are WAY overqualified for and you will like it or you can quit."

Because several people were working there from [the city] where they had been doing "real" jobs with suits and shit. Now they were generic "clerks" and their jobs were gone. Just like that. Poof! whee!

Even better, many of them were a pay grade lower than me. In fact, everyone who got hired in when I did came in at a higher pay grade (to the tune of about 2-3 bucks more an hour) than the people who had been working there on "detail" from another department that got shut down.

Lemme tell you kids, that makes for some bitter clerks. There's this one guy who cracks me up. He looks just like Wilford Brimley, except evil and bitter and resentful that the people he's been working for have screwed him over and over and over again. Like, if this guy gave you oatmeal, it would have heroine in it, that kind of guy.

We'll call him Wilford.

Wilford has been working as a temp in the IRS for something like five years or something. This is especially horrifying when you consider that people got hired THIS YEAR for non-temp positions. The government has screwed him time and time again in different ways, until he just kind of rolls with it now. Nothing surprises him anymore. If a guy in a black suit and sunglasses came in and said that in order to continue working as a generic clerk he needed to have his left testical removed, he would probably drop his shorts before he thought about it twice. The fact that they hired us all in at a higher pay grade than him didnt even register as a more than a grunt and a sigh, hes so used to shit like that.

Wilford is a great source of knowledge. When asked where a form goes, his answer is usually something along the lines of "fuck it" or "who the fuck cares?"

Wilford is awsome.