Don’t Ever Apply for Unemployment

By sovknight | August 15, 2008

I’m still jobless.  I know that it’s been forever and ever since I had a "real" job, but this whole year has zipped by so fast that it’s hard to conceive of the fact that it’s August already, and I’ve been unemployed for over seven months now.  That’s the longest time I’ve gone without a job since I was eighteen years old.  Half a lifetime ago.

I’m still plugging along though.  I’m not in dire straights or anything, but money is tighter than I’m used to.  This is likely the reason for my lapse in judgement and common sense in filing for unemployment insurance.

You know those little terriers that perform in fairs and sideshows?  Little circus dogs that jump through hoops like little yapping fools for the entertainment of others?  That’s exactly what filing for unemployment is like.  It’s a humiliating experience so chock-full of red tape and bureaucracy that it makes your head spin like Linda Blair at a baptism.  You’d think that in this day and age, filling out some government forms would be as simple as logging onto some dot-gov  web site and typing in some info.  Well, they make you think it’s that simple, but not long after typing the equivalent text of War and Peace into Utah’s wonderful web site, professing secrets and useless information about myself to government employees, the response of the state is to send you more forms in the mail.  These forms contain the exact same questions that were answered online, only in convenient annoying manual form, destined to be lost somewhere in the back of a mail truck on their way to not being read by anybody.

Then there’s the tease.  According to some random formula, possibly involving horses stomping out numbers, Utah came up with the amount of $430 per week that I would receive, should I qualify of course, of unemployment insurance.  That’s a little exciting.  After all, that’s roughly ten dollars per hour.  I could sit around and collect unemployment whilst continuing my vegetative state.  Putting a damper on that idea though is the fact that you are required to send them proof of at least two job prospects every week, complete with contact names, dates, and outcome of the request.  So much for sitting around.

That’s not such a bad deal though.  The whole point is to get a job, and forcing you to look is a good thing.  I had no problem with it.

Then they sent me a debit card in the mail.  A shiny little card with a MasterCard logo on the front, promising untold riches at the expense of my former employer.  This card is the method of which the state pays the insurance, forcing you to use it whenever you want to pay for something.  I chuckled a little at the little pamphlet that came with the card, detailing the fact that a service charge would be incurred each time I used the card at an ATM.  Government programs are so wonderful!

This whole situation culminated in a phone call from a "helpful" asshole government employee who called to ask why the hell I don’t have a job.  His intent was to ascertain my eligibility for unemployment insurance, asking me the same type of stupid questions that I could swear I already answered in electronic as well as written form at least twice.  Government is nothing if not thorough.  Interestingly, he seemed to have copies of all of the statements from employees and the corporate office of my former employer at his disposal.  These are documents I had no access to myself.  I wasn’t allowed to see them or know their content, but the tool on the phone apparently did.  He even read bits of them to me in a mocking tone, asking me to explain my actions and defend my position on why I got fired.  I told him I’d never seen those documents, and I countered his argument with my own story, which should have been plainly obvious by that point.  He didn’t buy it though.  He told me they’d "have a decision" by the end of the day.  I wasn’t too hopeful.

Yes, Best Buy challenged my claim, and I was denied unemployment insurance by the state of Utah.  No surprise to me at all.  Seems my firing was "justified" by my actions, and Best Buy was "justified" in canning me because I broke a DVD case after ten years of faithful service.  Government protects the big companies, and I don’t get to peck at the little crumbs of help they throw in the dirt.  Seems logical.

Ah well.  Back to the job search.  This whole experience was an exercise in frustration anyway, so I’m glad it’s over.  I wish I’d have know ahead of time though.  Live and learn.