Or - How I Learned To Stop Smiling And Dread Sandy
I work for the department of Taxation and Finance for the state of New York in their Collections department, and I had an interesting day today. First off, some clarification - while, yes, to an extent, I am 'that guy' that you don't want to be needing to talk to ever, but I do my best to help people fix their root issues so they don't need to keep talking to my department. What those people do from there is up to them, I can only give them the tools and information.
In an average day, I field between about 30-60 calls, with call length varying depending on the time of year (filing season, refund season, audit season) and the type of issue. I'm on the phone probably 5.75 hours out of the 7.5 I'm at work. This matters only insofar as to tell you that today I've handled maybe six calls, none of which were of any particularly strange length. Not as many of my fellow employees called out today as I expected, so we're not too short-staffed, but even still this is a tiny number of incoming calls.
Add on top of that the events of the storm and a sort of relaxation of the prohibition of internet use in between breaks so long as that use was storm-related, we had a rather strange atmosphere. First the sky - from the time the sun was up this morning through when the phones clicked off for the day our skies were soot-gray. My office is a side building connected to both of the main tax buildings with walkways and connecting tunnels, and we have the benefit of some rather large windows. Those windows gave a particularly cheery view of the last remaining leaves being forcefully ripped from their trees and branches deforming in the wind, and of people moving in harried fashion through the courtyards and walkways of our office campus. The ceiling started a weird whistling noise that has slowly ramped up at about 12:00, that's certainly been a bit unnerving.
The hurricane's been a constant and escalation source of discussion and news today. Approximately 375,000 people in Battery Park and other low-lying areas of NYC were evacuated last night, in an attempt by Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg to prevent another Katrina. I would have to assume that some others evacuated voluntarily, but that's guesswork.
I do know that we've gotten over a half-a-dozen emails today regarding the ongoing progress of the storm - bridges and tunnels being closed, river crossings shut down, and all 'non-essential' state employees in NYC, Westchester and Long Island being directed to go home and stay there for the duration of the crisis. Fun thing about 'non-essential' - while I'm geographically separate from the city up here in Albany, my office is deemed 'essential' so there's realistically little chance of ever being directed to leave similarly. On top of that, when catastrophic events hit (and as the President has mandated a federal state of emergency, this qualifies) my office can sort of shut down on a conditional basis and reopen as an emergency management call center. The same people who may have cursed me out a week ago could be calling in begging for assistance, and I'll help them the same.
There's sort of a quiet, banal sense of urgency and dread, but through it all, bureacracy continues. It's damned weird to watch!
Wish me luck on keeping power and heat in my home in the next few days!
