Friday 25 May 2007

The Boys From the Blackstuff

What I have to say in not unlike what Fraser has already posted. I went in to sign on this morning in Partick.

I too spent an hour on the phone a few days ago with a lassie in a call-centre, as she asked me a load of questions to inaccurately fill out a form for me. Among the major mistakes that she made was multiplying my final wage by ten, making it appear to the dole that I would shortly be in receipt of several thousand pounds, rather than a few hundred.

There were also a few questions on the form marked as 'UNANSWERED' when more accurately they could have been termed 'UNASKED'.

At the buroo I was met by a lot of Group 4 security guys who radio-controlled my appointment by letting each other know I was coming. "Mr. Brogan coming up to see Mr. Brown..."

"Check."


This was after two of them had a lengthy chat about the army.

My appointment itself went a lot smoother than Fraser's. I was met first of all by a charmless lassie who checked through the form for the obvious errors the call-centre lass made.

One thing I did discover during my interview was that the first 3 days of my claim don't count as they are deemed 'waiting days'. How many millions is that saving them over the course of a year? If I claimed for 3 days I wasn't unemployed for, would that not be termed 'fraud'?

I then spoke with quite an efficient guy who just really wanted all the details on my jobseeker form filled out so he could send me on my way.

And send me on my way he did, armed with a couple of phone numbers to call about jobs I'm not really interested in. Still every job he showed me paid more than the job I've just been kicked out of and a fortnightly trip into Jobcentre Plus offers more prospects than the scumbag company I was with ever did.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had the exact same experience on Friday, right down to the ex-SAS guys stopping me from going over the white line. Got offered a plethora of shitey jobs including two in Maryhell. I sign on with the rest of the dole scum next Friday - ok dokey, pig in a pokey, good luck jobseekers!

Anna said...

On the geniuses who work for the employment people and who fill out our forms: when I had my interview to get my national insurance number at a Job Centre Plus, the kind lady interviewing me consistently both WROTE and PRONOUNCED the name of my home country as "Canadia". That inspires faith in the system.

Fraser said...

Ha ha, that's brilliant. Reminds me of the primary school teacher I used to have who insisted in 1980 that men had landed on Mars.