I'm on the bloody SWITCHBOARD gate on the phone system at work for the rest of the week. What does that entail? Basically this:

"Hello, thank you for calling the Internal Revenue Service, my name is Mr. Kellat, my badge number is [REDACTED], how may I direct your call?"

8 hours per day for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I may not answer questions. I must triage what you want and then transfer you away.

Normally this is the "punishment gate".

Call volume is actually down pretty hard. Receipts of paper documents are down pretty hard too. I'm still in "seasonal" status which means my staying in paid status depends upon there being sufficient workload to justify my being in paid status. We took an entire campus off the air today which is extremely unusual for what should be the absolute peak for phone calls. If we take more campuses off the air tomorrow the possibility of furlough may advance forward earlier than the end of June.

The House Ways and Means Committee will be doing a markup Wednesday on a restructuring bill for work. What could go wrong....