SARS - the bad & the good

Hiya, Difficult to rate, as the phone menu-system takes one to people without enough experience of life or the work. If a case is outside of their capability, there does not seem to be anyone who can handle a complex case. On the other hand, going into SARS & meeting Mrs Jackson made my day.

I have spent, cumulatively, weeks on the phone over many months. SARS has not bothered to pitch for either a face 2 face nor a virtual scheduled meeting, so I took my wife with late-stage dementia - no speech or cognitive ability - in to the Cape Town office & told them that I had done my civic duty : I was handing in a defaulter who hadn't filed her tax forms for 7 years whom they wanted to fine R27000 I told them that I had done my part & now it was over to them to try to sort out my wife's tax problem. There was a bit of a ****-show & a circus before the woman, who - thank God - had a mother with dementia, said to me that if I co-operated instead of making it her (unsolvable) problem, she would sort it out. Mrs Jackson was a hero ! There are some things that one cannot sort out over the phone. We spent over 3 hours sorting out each missing tax-year & my wife seemed to enjoy the outing - Mrs Jackson would give her a sweet or let me walk her around if Fud got restless while all the computer-processing & printing was taking place.

Someone needs to give Mrs Jackson a medal for how she handled ME in my angry state, let alone how she maintained her composure & systematically sorted out the problem, year by year, even staying after her shift to complete the task.

You have a gem there, SARS : don't lose her. This has to be your employee of the month - at least !