TurboTax

A guy comes running into Apollo Bagels, where my roommate, Sarah, her friend, Ronnie, and I are standing in line. He sidesteps us to stand with the next guy in line, clearly his friend. “Okay, this is what I’ve gathered,” he says, a little breathless. “The dude over there told me that they’re all standing in line for taxes! Apparently today’s the last day?” The two of them look back to the line of people on the other side of the street. It’s wrapped around a block and a half and, weirdly, does seem to be starting at the strange brick and mortar TurboTax location (did anyone else not know that TurboTax has a physical location??).

I give Sarah and Ronnie my best ‘get a load of this guy’ look. This poor man has been hoodwinked. Today is definitely not the last day to do taxes. Or, frankly, I would be incredibly screwed.

Fortunately, his friend also is not as quick to believe the informants. “Seriously?” he responds. “That’s a lot of people that are just … trying to do taxes? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Dude, I don’t know… the one guy said that and everyone else around him started nodding and saying ‘yeah, taxes’! I didn’t believe it at first, either, but they were pretty convincing.”

I decide to insert myself. “Today is certainly not the last day to do taxes. Maybe it’s free just today?”

They both seem to ponder this idea.

“Something’s not adding up,” one says, and the other nods in agreement.

“Alright, I’m going back.” The first guy dashes back out of the Apollo Bagels line. The rest of us move forward another few feet.

Sarah, Ronnie and I get back to discussing our bagel orders. We’re all aligned when our source comes dashing back.

“Okay. So that entire group of people pulled a fast one on me.”

His friend gives him a ‘duh’ look.

“They are NOT in line for taxes. Apparently they’re in line for WWE tickets. TurboTax is doing some sort of partnership with them I guess?”

We all turn to look back at the growing line of people and form our own individual conclusions. The one that I don’t voice out loud, out of fear of saying something offensive to someone, is that every man in that line (and I would say 90% of them are, in fact, men) look like they either fight for WWE or wish that they fought for WWE.

“Oooookay,” Sarah says, “Now that makes a little more sense. That was not exactly the demo that I saw stressing about taxes.”

…Turns out, we were maybe all thinking the same thing.