Conversation with the tax lady

June 12, 2009

I just got off the phone with the Dutch 'trash tax' department. It was a really really priceless conversation. After getting transferred around, I get to the department that I was 'supposed' to be talking with (this is the 3rd woman I have spoken with on the 1 call). She says that she must speak Dutch to me, by law. So, I say that I must have the wrong number, because was transferred to her in order to get a specific piece of information about my trash tax.

She says that she wants to help me--talks a bit in English--says that the people around her in her office are looking at her, and that her boss is coming to sit next to her. I ask to speak with her boss, & she had no idea what to do. There was a mixture of surprise and fear in her voice, and she says that 'isn't a good idea'. I say that I am just trying to pay my trash tax. She asks me to hold, and gets off the line for a min (supposedly talking with her boss) and then comes back and helps me quickly in English. She was a nice woman, just unsure of how to handle the situation.

In the end, I said that she had made my weekend. She said that I made hers.

-C