Escape button: bye-bye humans

By Robert Lalah

There's nothing quite like a trip to the tax office in the morning. I recently found myself at the King Street, downtown Kingston, branch on a particularly busy day. It was my own fault, really. Everyone knows going to the tax office on the last day of the month is never a good idea. But I insist, like everyone else there that day, that it could not have been helped.

The line of taxpayers was so long it was intimidating, but I submitted to fate and quietly went and stood at the end of it.

On that day, all cashiers were at work, and all were moving quickly. The staff certainly couldn't be faulted for the sheer gloominess of the experience. That had more to do with the fact that nobody likes paying taxes. And nobody likes waiting in line. So waiting in line to pay taxes is a real double whammy.

The usual cast of characters was present and accounted for. There was the low pants-wearing fellow who smelled like smoke, walking around asking different people for a 'skip' in the line; the loud cellphone-talkers whose first words after 'hello' were, without fail, 'mi deh ah di tax office!'; the agitated woman who clearly was having a bad day and so greeted everyone who looked in her direction with a scowl; and the brazen line-cutters who, without a hint of remorse, walked right by everyone else waiting in line and straight up to the cashier with whom, I presume, there is some sort of 'understanding'.

Waiting elsewhere

Add to this the fact, then, when you finally get to the head of the line, there's always someone who appears out of nowhere to tell you that they were ahead of you, but they were sitting to the side while the line moved. And this isn't always a lie either.

It's now accepted practice to stand in line for two seconds, declare that spot yours, then go find the most comfortable chair in the waiting area to lounge the minutes away. Then, when your 'space' makes it to the finish line, you jump up and reclaim it. Oddly enough, it seems this tactic is employed primarily by able-bodied young men, and not senior citizens or nursing mothers who could be excused.

All this can be frustrating, but it's what happens almost anywhere there's a line these days.

Many large companies have gone the online route to help make things easier. And it often helps. Even certain tax transactions can now be made online. This is a great way to avoid the vexing encounters that an actual wait in line will inevitably bring.

However, there's something a little sad about that, isn't there? Sure, it's convenient to tap a few keys and get the task done while at home in your underpants. But when we opt to do this just because being around each other in such large groups is so annoying, we perhaps have a bigger problem we need to address.

Stop hiding

If we could work a little harder on developing social skills and courtesies, and if, somehow, we could magically get everyone to see the benefits of being kind and respectful to each other while we are in these large groups, maybe we wouldn't have to keep hiding from each other.

Society is cold enough as it is. Everyone in traffic is an enemy trying to make us late for work, the police don't like us and we don't like them, those shady-looking characters standing outside the bank are just waiting to rob us, church people don't like heathens and heathens couldn't care less.

It's a madhouse out there. But avoiding the problem, and each other, isn't going to make things better. Turning our back to a burning building doesn't stop it from burning. And if this building is allowed to burn to the ground, we're all going to be left without a home.

Robert Lalah is assistant editor - features, and author of the popular 'Roving with Lalah'. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and robert.lalah@gleanerjm.com