I’m not the greatest at falling-out forms. Over the years, I have filled out job applications, school applications, and I have gone through several different generations of pastoral profile forms. I haven’t filled out income tax forms. A couple of times we have had professional accountants fill out our tax forms, but more commonly Susan does the hard work of getting the right information on the right line. I assist by doing research, going through our records for the various lists of checks and payments for deductions and other items, but she does the hard work of filling out the forms.

Back when we were serving small churches, with no secretary, I filled out the annual reports to the denomination. In those days the forms were legal length carbon sets that could be filled out by hand or by typewriter. I usually compiled hand notes on another pad and then copied the numbers to the forms with a typewriter. Most of the information requested on the forms came from our annual reports, so it wasn’t the biggest job in the world.

However, I haven’t filled out those reports for the last 30 years. I have had administrative help in the church office and the task has fallen to someone else.

Now is the time that people around me are working on filling out the forms. At work Julie is completing the forms for the annual report to the church and at home Susan is gathering information to begin the process of filling out the forms to meet the April 15 tax deadline. With Easter falling on April 5, there won’t be much filling out of forms the last week of the month as we journey through Holy Week. So she is working ahead to get things ready.

I can remember that when we were children, I had a brother who loved to fill out forms. He’d retrieve old subscription forms from the garbage can and fill in the name and address questions. I think my folks were pretty good at keeping those old “return postage paid” cards from getting to the mailbox, but I’m not completely sure that we didn’t occasionally get a few weeks of an unintended subscription because he was constantly filling in forms.

I managed to get my name on the papers for school and answer the questions on tests, but I never found it very interesting to fill in the blanks on a standardized form. My vocation has placed me in a position where there aren’t all that many forms that need to be filled out.

These days, with computers, things are different. There is no longer the adjustment of paper in the typewriter to make sure that the X’s end up in the boxes. Many of the forms and questionnaires we fill out are online and we accomplish the task with a few points and clicks of the mouse and an occasional typing of a short amount of text.

It is also the case that most of the forms are never “read” in the traditional sense, either. Computers scan the forms and retrieve the data to be included with other data. I am sure that the IRS still has buildings full of auditors who look for mistakes or fraud in income tax filings, but the computers check the math and discover that kind of error. I’ve never visited an IRS processing facility, but I’m thinking that rows of accountants with green eye shades and sharpened number 2 pencils isn’t an accurate picture. I’m pretty sure it is mostly rows of computer screens with people reviewing the data and machines processing the forms and looking for the kinds of mistakes that are statistically most common.

That fact that I really don’t fill out too many forms hasn’t kept me from occasionally complaining about all of the forms in the world. I virtually never fill out customer satisfaction surveys unless the reward for doing so is something I really want. It is getting to the place where a free cup of coffee is expensive enough for me to fill out the form, but not quite.

I do know that most reviews are produced by professional reviewers. Companies pay individuals to write favorable reviews of their products and disparaging reviews of their competitors’ products. When I read product reviews, I avoid the ones that give a product either the highest or lowest rating. I assume that those have been submitted by the professionals who have a financial stake in sales and that the only chance of getting an honest review is to read one that has both good and bad things to say about the product. Of course the professionals are probably already on to people like me and know how many stars they have to put on their product to get me to read the review. It is a tricky business at best.

I took a course in sociology once and created questionnaires for my research. When the questionnaires were returned, after being disappointed at how few I got back, I went through the answers and started to analyze the data. The problem was, however, that the questionnaires didn’t provide enough information to draw any conclusions. Some people reported things the way I expected. Others did not. The results were varied and didn’t seem to follow any particular overwhelming trend. Of course I wasn’t a professional sociologist and I knew next to nothing about designing questionnaires to get the desired information, but I did learn from the project that it is hard to get accurate information, even when you have a hunch about what the answers will be.

As a result, I don’t put much faith in the power of questionnaires or forms to get reliable information. If you want to find out what people think, the best way is to talk to them. If you want to find out how they’re going to vote, the best way is to wait until you see the election results.

And, as is the case with taxes and annual reports, it is helpful to surround yourself with people who are good at filling out forms.

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