Mmmm...shoe leather

Every had a moment when you hear the words coming out of your mouth and wished you could pull them back? And they just hang there in the air, taunting you with your inability to suck them back in?

You know you have.

I had that this week.

I was having a meeting with some of my staff. And we hear, coming from my APAO's office, a noise.

Bam! Bam!

Pause.

Bam! Bam!

What is that, one of my staff asked.

Bam! Bam!

Bam! Bam!

I said, "Oh you know. It's that time of the month."

And I wanted those words back that instant. I turned five shades of maroon and my staff all scattered, kindly waiting until they were in the hall to fall out laughing (though not kind enough not to repeat the story multiple times...).

See what I meant was...

Every month, at the beginning of the month, we have to prepare our Value Added Tax receipts in order to get the tax back. At 20% here in Estonia, that is comes to a substantial amount. I usually get back a few hundred euros each month.

But getting the refund involves stapling dozens of receipts to a page, preferably no more than 4 per page, stamping each receipt with your name, entering all of the data into a spreadsheet with no more than 17 receipts per spreadsheet, and photocopying all of it.

It usually takes a few hours.

So that Bam! Bam!...was exactly what I thought it was...it was my APAO stapling her receipts.

VAT, dammit! It's the VAT time of the month!