Surviving tax quite nicely
I haven't written much here this week, but please rest assured it was due to a cause completely unrelated to working in the tax pool - it was something to do with having something resembling a social life outside of work.
The overtime was almost non-existent - I went just one hour over the required work week minimum, and I got all my work done too. Just too freakin' sweet, really. It helped that our team was fully staffed this week and tax files were snapped up as soon as they arrived.
On the downside there weren't any new returns to pick up today. On the upside - yeah - there weren't any new returns to pick up today.
There was some drama before I finished.
There's always drama.
I had to wrestle to submission the ugliest report from an investment bank I've ever seen. The scary thing, of course, is the fact that I know there are uglier reports out there.
Of course, the fact that nastier reports exist to be man-handled isn't that surprising, mainly because in retrospect, I have to admit it wasn't even that bad. I just had to slog through a long exercise in tedious data entry, after a stint of careful analysis to make sure everything was being entered correctly.
To make up for the tedium, I have to admit that there was a pretty damn sweet sense of accomplishment once the return was complete. It made up for all the times I wondered whether all the tax stuff I was learning in university would ever come in handy.
Of course I'll find out on Monday whether that work was completed correctly. But aside from clearing review notes, the only thing left to wonder is whether more returns will arrive for me to work on. If there aren't too many, I may just find myself floating around, helping my friends with the returns that they're working on - I've gained a metric ton of experience in the past two weeks and it's especially fun to share.
Disclaimer: my sunny disposition towards tax is no doubt influenced at least in part by the fact that I go on vacation in 10 days - I leave a week before the Canadian tax deadline. That means if there are insane hours of work in the last week, it'll be physically impossible to pull me back in, short of the deployment of a team of team of body snatchers to Europe. I doubt, however, that my company plans on ever putting me in any Bourne Identity-style scenarios. And that's probably a Good Thing, unless you're into the 'planning assassinations and getting shot at' scene.