One year during tax season, I was gathering all my papers to send to my accountant when I realized that my T4 was nowhere to be found. A procrastinator at heart, this was only a few days before the annual tax deadline, but I have an awesome accountant who is used to my last-minute requests. I searched all my folders, checking to see if it possibly got misfiled, but when I succumbed to defeat, I went the following day and visited the HR department of the company I work at. “Oh it’s easy.” the lady from HR informed me. “Just go online and you can get any of the information you need.” She gave me the web site address, and so I went about my day. That evening when I got home, I sat down at the computer to try this online approach. Registering for an account was quite a lengthy process, demanding all sorts of tidbits of specific information I did not have at the ready. When all was said and done, my new account was created and I foolishly imagined myself a few clicks away from the last piece of documentation I would need to send my package off to the accountant. Then the web site informs me that for security reasons, they must MAIL me a top secret decoder ring code before I can use their web site. Naturally, this would take 7-10 days business days to arrive, and thus there was no way I’d make the tax deadline.

I returned to the HR department and reported my misadventure to the lady, who then suddenly remembered the mailing requirement. Suddenly very helpful, she now says “Here, I’ll go print your T4 for you” and returned a moment later with it in hand. I smiled and gave her a big “thank-you”, which could have been subtitled “… but why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” Sigh…