Those of you who are still employed may wonder what it’s like to be unemployed.
A snarky answer might be “You’ll probably find out for yourself soon enough.”
Here’s what it’s really like:
Brief chat in the personnel office, fill up boxes and take home, ponder a life living in a refrigerator box, and then call the labor department because you might be eligible for unemployment benefits.
Time to sponge off of Society. Wait, isn’t this your tax money?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Let’s see what it takes to file an unemployment claim. This is a mercifully abridged version.
Dial the Tele-Benefit Line.
A voice tree. You may prefer English, so press 1. So far so good.
You might be interested in extensions to benefits for claims already filed. OK. Press 1 for continued claims, press 2 for continuing continued claims, press 3 for claims that have not been claimed yet.
Due to the tsunami-like number of calls, try filing on the Web.
OK.
The Department of Labor is mandated to obtain your social security number under U.S. 43 section b, section C of 32 dash D, pursuant to something or other, section E, blah blah blah.
OK.
Please enter your nine-digit social security number. Is that correct? Press 1. Now enter your four-digit personal identification number. You will hear a series of clicks as you are transferred to a person.
No clicks.
Due to the enormous volume of calls, it would take hours to talk to a human being. Please call back later.
She hangs up on you. Hangs up.
Wow. That took three minutes and 50 seconds.
That’s about as much time as listening to “Tutti Frutti“ twice. As good as “Tutti Fruitti” is, listening to it 24 times in a row would be a bit much, and Little Richard doesn’t even mention social security numbers.
Try again and again and again and again.
Each time, the Tele-Benefits robot hangs up. Those people, wherever they are — in a bunker somewhere — must really be busy.
- * * *
At first, before all this happened, you actually reached a person, answered the 20 questions, and then the phone line went dead. An accident? Hmmm.
The next time you called, and spent 45 minutes waiting, you reached Hostile Man. A public servant with nothing but scorn for the public.
That did not end well. You didn’t know you could scream that loud over the phone. Bad words. Very bad words burst out of you like flaming hydrogen from the Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity.
Hostile Man hung up.
Oops.
- * * *
So now here you are on the Tele-Benefits Line. Because of the avalanche of calls, Tele-Benefits explains labor law to you for four minutes and then disconnects. Call back later, she says. Like next summer.
The saga continues. The next work day, you can’t even get to the labor law seminar because Tele-Benefits is only hanging up on people whose last digits end in 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7. For 2, 5, 8, or 9, try tomorrow, or Tuesday through Thursday, whatever comes first.
Oh, come on. This is ridiculous. Let’s call the commissioner’s office.
For faster service, file online…
A person. I’ll call someone and have them call you back, she says.
No one ever calls. That was too good to be true.
Maybe the system is trying to convey a message to you. You’re just an unemployed self-loathing bum. How dare you apply for unemployment? Besides, if we don’t relent what are you going to do about it?
Wait. Someone is actually answering the phone.
“Yes, that’s me. Yup, 30 years. Yes, that’s a long time.”
Wow. She is so nice and helpful. She’s so calm. Caring. You must be hallucinating.
You take back everything bad you said about the Department of Labor. Great bunch of people. So sympathetic.
Except for Mr. Hostile.
He should be required to listen to “Tutti Frutti“ again and again 100 times.
Or apply for unemployment himself.
Science writer Abram Katz was laid off Nov. 13 from the New Haven Register after three decades at the paper.