So, with the “clean lyrics” ethos in mind, I had the audacious and silly Michael Scott-esque idea of offering to share a poem on property tax appeals, when the next team meeting started. As a matter of fact, my very first ever ChatGPT prompt was asking it to write me an Oregon property tax poem, to which it blew my mind in 7 seconds!

My direct supervisor, whom I like and respect a lot (and I’d imagine he feels similarly towards me), and shares a similar sense of humor, was coincidentally gone that meeting (although that wasn’t a factor in my calculus of whether or not to share). In a half serious, half joking, prim-and-proper tone, I pitched it as a potential on-topic way for us to get in the zone and maybe even better engaged with the minutiae of our [dry and administrative] job duties, as a plausible, “clean lyrics” alternative to our boss’s cool idea.

If you’re already chuckling, and maybe cringing a little, you’re in good company. I took it a step further and decided to take a verbal poll over Zoom, and ask if anyone wanted to hear it. One of my colleagues suggested waiting until our supervisor was back so he wasn’t left out. I laughed and replied “that’s the nicest way I’ve saying, ‘please no, spare us the cringe! Don’t be a Michael Scott with us being Jim Halperts.’ But it’s all good, I’ll spare you guys.” Given the cultural popularity of the TV Show “The Office,” I knew most people would get the joke, and it seems everyone did. I got some hearty laughs after that.

Most people seemed to enjoy my sincere and goofy essence, especially since I’m a good colleague that cares about others, and gets my job done. And honestly, if that type of completely innocuous humor happened to be less than well-received by someone, who didn’t say anything, I don’t fucking care. Those wouldn’t be the people that I’d click with or win over anyways. If you have a problem with me as a colleague, you’d have a problem with anyone as a colleague.

I’ll take my net social winnings with those who matter and actually appreciate me, and those who don’t can be dismissed as overhead on my figurative social balance sheet, as emotionlessly as utilities or administrative fees. With age, my figurative social net operating income (NOI) only increases, and figurative social expense ratio only decreases, especially measured year over year, or longer.

In the meantime before the next week’s meeting, I shared the poem with my supervisor during our one-on-one. The look on his face was worth a thousand words. He jokingly suggested that in my free time, I make an AI-generated “chill hip-hop remix” of my property tax poetry lyrics. So I kept that in mind.

The next meeting my supervisor also had to be gone, so I told our team that I already shared the poem with him and we didn’t have to worry about excluding him. To not inadvertently push anyone’s discomfort with my goofy sense of humor too far, I mentioned that if anyone actually wanted to hear the ridiculous poem, to just privately message me. To my pleasant and rather endearing surprise, my one other colleague on my team close to my age (she’s I believe a few years younger actually) reached out and said she wanted to hear it.

Fortunately this type of poem wouldn’t be a foreseeable HR problem. Being a government employee, I know everything I do is subject to public records requests and auditing. I never say anything on my work chat or email that I wouldn’t be okay with my boss’s boss’s boss seeing, or plastered on the front pages of The Oregonian.

More recently this week, even though my supervisor was totally joking about the hip hop mix tape, he was absolutely rolling on the floor cracking up, when I actually followed through on making an AI generated song, and shared the MP3 files, although this time over private personal phone text. I also privately shared the MP3 files over text, to both my boss and my above mentioned colleague.

So how did I pull this off? Well the poem was courtesy of Gemini. The actual soundtrack was courtesy of the free version of the Suno app/website. It was kind of fun, to be honest. On a more serious note, I think real creativity in music is still far better done by human ingenuity. That said, for comedy, parodies, etc., or as a learning tool, AI can be a novel and admittedly fun tool/toy.

It’s a good lesson that while actually doing your job well, with integrity to the public matters first and foremost, it’s also good to be able to make fun of yourself and enjoy the journey along the way. Take your job seriously, but take yourself less so.

So… here’s the poem:

At Five-Oh-One, on Haw-thorne Street, Where pub-lic needs and val-ues meet. I serve the town with heart and pride, With mar-ket da-ta as my guide.

On Jan-u-ar-y first, the day, I look at what the mar-kets say. The stat-ute says that I must be, A source of deep neu-tral-i-ty.

The retail owner has a case, We meet to-geth-er, face to face. We look at ev-ery va-cant space, To find the mar-ket’s hon-est place.

I use the income approach tool, It is the standard coun-ty rule. We take the prof-it, then di-vide, With math-e-mat-ics on our side.

For mul-ti-fam-ly build-ings too, I check the ren-tal facts with you. I find the rates from down the street, To make the val-ue quite com-plete.

The ner-dy num-bers help me show, How val-ues rise or how they go. I share the sales that I have found, To keep the roll on sol-id ground.

Though Mea-sure Fif-ty lim-its change, And keeps the tax-es in a range. It is my goal to be sin-cere, For ev-ery per-son wait-ing here.

The PVAB board will make the call, In-side the coun-ty hear-ing hall. The clerk records the fi-nal word, Where ev-ery voice is fair-ly heard.

How about it eh? I tried attaching the audio file samples to give it a listen, but it didn’t seem to work, so you’ll just have to take my word, or reach out to me. I also attached a screenshot of the Suno website.