I recently had to help my father organize the taxes for the past two years. Well, I did most of it, because I don't think he had to for himself in quite some time. My mother took care of it, at least according to her handwriting on most of the paperwork. And maybe my aunt helped out some as well. She was more of the math whiz than any of us.
What if I get to the bottom of the stairwell, try opening that door, and that's locked too? The thought that I might be trapped in a stairwell until Monday morning became a genuine concern. And it's not like my father would have been able to do anything - I had his car. I'm not calling 911 over this, Lord. Everything in the building was closed. Not even a cleaning crew around.
When I say organize, I use that term loosely. I don't know what the hell I'm doing with their taxes. I've never even seen their taxes until this past year. I'd say everything's secretive with things in this family but we're talking about taxes here. Not so much secretive as boring.
For many years, my parents had their taxes done by a certified public accounting firm downtown. They're located in an office building they share with a few other businesses, such as law firms and a yoga place. The inside has quite a 1980's-90's industrial feel to it. Lots of steel doors, drop ceiling hallways. Very inviting. Who wouldn't want to come here and do business.
Looking at my parents record-keeping, it seems like they tackled tax season right away. Every February, like clockwork. Inside a filing cabinet in one of the back bedrooms sits about fifteen of the same color folder, their completed tax paperwork for the last decade and then some. Very organized, and probably a little excessive. You'd think they were running a business. How long are you supposed to keep taxes for?
It took me a long, drawn-out process to get the taxes prepared (code for I might have been too lazy to do them). The CPA firm sends out a simple workbook, where it seems we just plug in numbers that we know and send it off for them to finish the job. Pretty easy, but I was very much dreading it. We then package up the workbook and corresponding tax forms into a fancy brown mailing envelope, address it to the firm, slap one of my parent's return address stickers on it, and away it goes.
Well, not through the mail here. The office is still operating under some COVID guidelines, which is totally fine. Their instructions are either you can mail the forms and 1099's, or drop them off in a mail slot at their office door. I decided on the latter.
I dropped off the package on a Saturday so I wouldn't have to pay for parking. The address of the firm is number 101, however in the vestibule I went into, there was no 101. Hell, there were no 100's at all according to the directory. I hopped into the only thing inside the vestibule - an elevator - and pressed for the second floor. Do the 100's start on the second floor? Who knows.
The elevator was slow as molasses - so slow I imagined the door was just never going to open again. When it finally did, I found myself staring down a long hallway. None of the businesses were what I was looking for, and they all started in the 200's. Well, that's just great. Am I in the wrong damn building? I walked the entire length of the L-shaped floor until I came to an exit stairwell. As the door closed to the stairwell, I tugged at it and noticed it was locked.
Well, shit.
Alas, all that worry for nothing, though. The bottom door opened. To a first floor hallway inaccessible from where I originally entered the building. Who the hell built this place? I walked around a little bit more and found the CPA's office. Well, one of their doors anyway. One of their four doors that directed me to the fifth, around the corner to the 101 address, with the mail slot I had been looking for this entire time. And right by this 101 office was an exit to the outside, on the opposite side of where I entered. Super. Fuck this building's design.