{"id":534,"date":"2008-01-28T02:59:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T08:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=534"},"modified":"2008-01-28T02:59:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T08:59:00","slug":"2008-01-28-sars-client-being-helped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2008-01-28-sars-client-being-helped\/","title":{"rendered":"2008-01-28 SARS Client Being Helped"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/2226199433\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 410px; height: 397px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2211\/2226199433_2b2518568d.jpg?w=605\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/> <span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/2226199433\/\">2008-01-28 SARS Client Being Helped<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/royblumenthal\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\"> I sketched the lineart for this pic in my li&#8217;l black Moleskine while sitting with Jennifer in a long queue.<\/p>\n<p>We were at the South African Revenue Service &#8212; SARS &#8212; trying to sort out the fact that my tax profile had been hijacked by my ex-tax accountant, Debbie Duckworth.<\/p>\n<p>The dude pictured was sitting at one of the booths, and the tax consultant was busy finding some documents for him.<\/p>\n<p>When Jennifer and I got to our booth after about half an hour, we were helped by no fewer than three people simultaneously.<\/p>\n<p>It was like one of those surgical emergencies where one team is working on the vascular system, another on the heart, and another fixing broken bones.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re ever at the Randburg SARS office getting help, I strongly recommend seeing Sibongile, Chester, or Tshidi. Or all three at once.<\/p>\n<p>The upshot of all of this is that I phoned Debbie Duckworth, my ex-tax accountant, from someone else&#8217;s cellphone. I had to do this because she was simply ignoring all of my phonecalls, and has been doing so since last year.<\/p>\n<p>She didn&#8217;t answer, so I left this message, with Sibongile amd Tshidi and Jennifer as my witnesses:<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Hi Debbie. This is Roy Blumenthal. It&#8217;s approximately 5pm on Monday the 28th of January. I&#8217;m with a SARS official right now, and I&#8217;m letting you know that they&#8217;re asking you to release my tax details from your profile.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>I handed the phone to Sibongile, who confirmed this.<\/p>\n<p>I then took the phone and continued:<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I&#8217;ve had enough of the trouble you&#8217;ve caused for me, and earlier this afternoon I called the SARS Anti-Corruption Hotline, and they have indicated that they&#8217;ll be investigating you. Please release my profile and let me get on with filing my tax return. Thanks.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Seconds after I put the phone down and handed it back, it rang. It was Debbie.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Hi Debbie,&#8217; I said, putting it on speakerphone.<\/p>\n<p>She said, &#8216;Hullo. Who am I speaking to?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;It&#8217;s Roy Blumenthal. Please can you sort out my tax profile situation.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;What? Roy Blumenthal? Uh&#8230; I&#8217;ll call you back later.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Click.<\/p>\n<p>The SARS people shook their heads sagely.<\/p>\n<p>A little later, when they were trying to free my name from Debbie&#8217;s profile, Sibongile asked me to try and call again, to see if Debbie would give them some information.<\/p>\n<p>So I called from my phone. On speakerphone. In front of witnesses.<\/p>\n<p>Debbie said, &#8216;How dare you keep calling me! This is bordering on harassment! I&#8217;ve released your name!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Actually,&#8217; I said, &#8216;you didn&#8217;t. You simply deactivated my name, but kept it attached to your profile.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;You&#8217;re a psycho! Quite frankly, you&#8217;re horrible! A psycho! All of the people at C_____t say so! You&#8217;re a psycho. And you can have me investigated as much as you want, you&#8217;re just a psycho!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The &#8216;people&#8217; at C_____t might very well have called me a psycho. Who knows? Maybe I AM a psycho. But what on earth has that got  to do with my tax profile? (The people from C_____t include an ex-girlfriend of mine, and her buddy. Debbie is their accountant now.)<\/p>\n<p>I said, &#8216;Thanks Debbie. I&#8217;ll say cheers now.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>And that should have been the end of that, cos Sibongile managed to liberate my profile, and it&#8217;s now with its rightful owner &#8212; me.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings us up to tonight. My phone rings.<\/p>\n<p>A guy&#8217;s voice with a stiff Afrikaans accent says, &#8216;Hello. Is this Roy Blumenthal? I&#8217;m Frik Botha, Debbie Duckworth&#8217;s fiancee. I believe you&#8217;re threatening her.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I&#8217;m not threatening her,&#8217; I say. &#8216;And I&#8217;d appreciate it if you don&#8217;t phone me.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>He kept telling me about how he would &#8216;advise&#8217; me not to threaten his fiancee.<\/p>\n<p>And I told him, &#8216;Frik, please don&#8217;t phone me again, or else I&#8217;ll be seeking an injunction against you.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>So he carried on shouting into his phone.<\/p>\n<p>I said, &#8216;Thanks Frik. Please don&#8217;t call again. Bye.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>He said, &#8216;Don&#8217;t you&#8211;&#8216;<\/p>\n<p>Click. I put the phone down.<\/p>\n<p>It rang again. And he threatened me some more. And I asked him politely not to call me again. And put the phone down.<\/p>\n<p>All of which makes me think, &#8216;What on EARTH is Debbie Duckworth doing all this for? I was the tiniest of all possible clients, with very straightforward books. And all she had to do was release my damn profile.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, she&#8217;s escalated this into a fullblown investigation. Not of me, but of HER!<\/p>\n<p>Which is crazy. Cos if she&#8217;s been lying to any of her clients the way she lied to me, then she&#8217;s got stuff to hide. Which means she&#8217;s got something to lose.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got nothing to lose. I&#8217;m just a crazy freelancer with a web presence.<\/p>\n<p><i>I scanned the Moleskine sketch, and popped it into Photoshop CS2, where I spent way too long playing with colours and textures, and enjoying myself tremendously while Debbie and Frik seethed somewhere in suburban bliss in Helderkruin, Krugersdorp. And yeah&#8230; I believe the Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc IS tax deductable.<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2008-01-28 SARS Client Being Helped, originally uploaded by royblumenthal. I sketched the lineart for this pic in my li&#8217;l black Moleskine while sitting with Jennifer in a long queue. We were at the South African Revenue Service &#8212; SARS &#8212; &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2008-01-28-sars-client-being-helped\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2008-01-28 SARS Client Being Helped<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-8C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}