Remember my BIR certification adventure from March? Well, fast forward two months and we're still waiting. Classic me—always optimistic, always hoping something would magically happen. Spoiler: it didn't.
So today, I decided to give them a call. Not for anything complicated, just a simple "Hey, any updates on our certification?" How hard could it be? Actually, let me rephrase that: how ENTERTAINING could it be?
I dialed the number. The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Then—blessing!—someone picked up. Finally! I thought. Progress at last!
I said "Hello?"
Silence.
I waited a moment, then tried again. "Hello? Is anyone there?"
Nothing. But wait—I could hear something. It sounded like... wind? Like someone had placed the phone right in front of an electric fan, letting the microphone catch all the ambient breeze of whatever room they were sitting in. Just the soft hum of air, like nature's white noise machine, but less useful.
"Hello? HELLO?" I said, a bit more urgently now.
Nothing. But the wind persisted.
I said "Hello" about a dozen times over the next minute. Each time, I'd wait, then hear nothing but that gentlewhoosh of air. At this point, I started to wonder if this was some kind of test. Was I being pranked? Was BIR running a social experiment on patience?
After about a minute—yes, I counted—I decided to hang up. Not out of frustration, mind you. Just pure curiosity about what the rest of my day would look like if I kept waiting for the wind to speak.
So here we are. It's been two months since we submitted our certification request, and the only thing I've successfully contacted is the sound of wind through a phone. Honestly, at this point, I'm half expecting a reply via carrier pigeon.
But hey, what's another day in the life of a startup founder navigating Philippine bureaucracy? Stay tuned—maybe next month I'll finally get a human on the line. Or maybe the wind will have learned to speak by then.
If any of you have successfully reached BIR by phone, please share your secrets. I'm starting to think there's a cheat code I'm missing.