I’m an accountant, a CPA.\u00a0 I work as the office administrator for a church where most people are young, tattooed artists who wear lots of denim and trendy hats.\u00a0 I have complete freedom in dressing for work and I’ve learned that jeans and hiking boots are much more comfortable than suits and heels.<\/p>\n
But there was a time when I had to embrace the professional look.\u00a0 Long ago.\u00a0 Back when I worked for the IRS.<\/p>\n
That’s right.\u00a0 The Internal Revenue Service, my employer of choice after graduating college.\u00a0 I had a passion for tax law, so it was the perfect job for me.<\/p>\n
I had difficulty being taken seriously, though.\u00a0 I look a bit young for my age and, with my long hair, well, let’s just say that most people thought I was sixteen rather than twenty-two.<\/p>\n
On one of my first audits, when I went to the office of the taxpayer’s attorney and introduced myself, the attorney laughed.\u00a0 He truly thought I was joking.<\/p>\n
Not exactly the way to get on the good side of the IRS agent.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I needed to change something, to make myself look older, more professional.<\/p>\n
I decided to put my hair up.<\/p>\n
Now, this was not an easy thing to do since I have no hairdressing skills, but I practiced and practiced and finally decided to give it a go.<\/p>\n
I had an important meeting with a taxpayer, his attorney, and his CPA.\u00a0 I wore my black power suit and had my hair twisted into a knot, fastened with some type of Goody’s appliance.\u00a0 I felt confident about the tax issues and about my appearance.<\/p>\n
The knot began to loosen, however, and in the middle of the meeting, my hair fell down around my shoulders.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n
Rather than letting the men see my distress, though, I decided to treat this like a perfectly normal occurrence.<\/p>\n
I simply shook my hair back from my face and said, “So, are you boys ready to see things my way?”\u00a0 Surprisingly, they were.<\/p>\n
Chalk it up to feminine wiles or to my vast knowledge of tax law.\u00a0 Either way, I got the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m an accountant, a CPA.\u00a0 I work as the office administrator for a church where most people are young, tattooed artists who wear lots of denim and trendy hats.\u00a0 I have complete freedom in dressing for work and I’ve learned that jeans and hiking boots are much more comfortable than suits and heels. But there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}