Two hours of my life I am never getting back. 

Before we get to that story, I feel as though I should explain my absence for the last couple of weeks.

Unlike Korea, the Christmas and New Year’s holidays are a big deal here in the states and this year there was even a bonus. Since the holidays fell on a Sunday, well we picked up Monday as the “observed day” and everyone got a three day weekend! 

This would be awesome except I’ve been waiting on my filing from the secretary of state so I could call the IRS so I can get a bank account set up, etc. 

Now, with the three day weekend I was waiting longer than expected for the filing since Monday was the holiday and we all know what happens when we take a three day weekend: the work piles up and with everyone basically treating the Friday before New Year’s as a half day. So there are actually only 3.5 working days between December 23rd and January the 3rd. Yippee for everyone except for me.

So I basically gave up on getting anything major done but as a consequence I had nothing to do. Trying to start a legit business is a major pain in the neck so in my down time, I considered robbery and all other sorts of scams and even considered doing them but then  I got the filing from the secretary of state on the 30th. WAYY too late to do anything about the IRS of course. 

I set myself a reminder to take care of what I needed from the IRS on Wednesday, January 3rd. Now I know that I could do it online but even their online system has hours of operations. 

Here is where we are getting to those 2 hours or 120 minutes or 7,200 seconds I’ll never get back. I spent that time having  smooth light jazz piped through my cell’s speaker. 

I should have known it was going too well with filling the application out online; I got all the way to the end when I got the following message.“We are sorry; we cannot fill this request using the online system. Please call XXX-XXX-XXXX , reference number ***” 

Great. Just great.So I called. 

“Due to a high call volume your wait will be greater than 30 minutes” 

“Alright fine, I have some things I can do while I’m on hold,” I thought. I still had plenty of time to get to the bank before they close 50 minutes later. 

I’m going through all of this information again with the agent, company name, social security number, etc, and we get to the end and the agent says “Oh, you already have a number! Hang on it is…..” 

Silence.I look down at my phone in sheer, gut wrenching terror: disconnected. 

My 50 minute wait down the drain as my brain processes that I have somehow become disconnected from the IRS right as I was about to get what I needed. 

So of course I did the only reasonable thing in this situation after I got my mouth to start working again.: I screamed. 

Probably a good thing my upstairs neighbor wasn’t home or I would hope he would have called the police. After I got a fair amount of my rage out, I called the IRS back. 

“Your anticipated wait time is greater than 15 minutes” Oh boy! Improvement, I might actually get through in 30 minutes!55 minutes later. 

Finally, I got what I needed and tore out of the house to make it to bank, two hours later than I had planned. Setting up the bank account was a breeze compared to dealing with the IRS, and now I can pay another lawyer to deal with the Feds on my trademark work! 

You have to have a sense of humor when dealing with these kinds of things, I’m just thankful that I get to deal with just state and local government from here forward.Next week, I go truck shopping and hopefully there will be no light jazz.

The Korean Street Truck Adventures are the real adventures of a female chef that is starting her own Korean street truck business in middle-America. This is her true story. Names and locations have been omitted. You can leave Ms. L a message in the comment section of this post. 

Here are the other chapters in this series:
The Korean Street Truck Adventures: Chapter 3: Sanitation

The Korean Street Truck Adventures: Chapter 2: Sexism in the Kitchen