New Math for Tax Season:
Mini fridge + Toaster Oven = More Appointment Time Slots
A lot of people work during working hours. You probably already knew that, even if you don’t think about it that often.
CPAs mostly work during working hours too.
So how do you meet with your CPA if you’re one of those people? Maybe you can get some time off to run over for your tax meeting. But if you can’t, you hope that your CPA offers evening or weekend appointments.
I happen to offer evening and weekend appointments and this year I decided I wanted to be able to offer more of them, but there was a problem.
Lots of people eat during meal times.
I like to eat during meal times.
There’s a meal time that occurs every evening and I’m particularly fond of eating around that time.
Last year, I’d usually run home for dinner or grab a bite downtown. Then I’d head back to the office to get more work done. Sometimes my wife would deliver a hot meal to my office, but as much as she loves me (and amazing as she is), that got old real quick (For her. I love having delicious food magically appear.)
It takes me about an hour and a half to get home, scarf down a meal, and get back to the office. It probably takes about an hour to grab something downtown. That chews up a lot of potential evening appointment times.
This is where my toaster oven and mini fridge come to the rescue (imaginary capes blowing in the wind and all, although if we learned anything from watching the Incredibles it’s “No Capes!” and maybe something about honest communication with your wife).
We (thanks Kelli) can make a big batch of dinner, portion it out into individual serving size containers and I can bring them in to work each day. The mini fridge keeps them fresh until it’s time to heat them up, and then I can just throw it in the toaster oven to bake for a bit.
Voila! Hot, tasty, non-soggy dinners in a fraction of the time it would take me to run home, or even go grab something across the street at Superburrito.
Here’s some more math (because I’m an accountant):
If a normal tax appointment takes one hour, and I can cut an average of 45 minutes off the time it takes to get dinner each night, and I work six nights a week during tax season, that frees up an extra four and a half tax appointments worth of time each week!
And that’s why I’m so excited about my new toaster oven and mini-fridge. Because at the end of the day, little life hacks like this make things more convenient for my clients, even the guy who gets stuck with the half appointment (Just kidding. You won’t find any half appointments on my calendar. Everybody gets a full appointment).
