systems

we may not like it but bureaucracy and the systems that it throws up but the modern world means it is necessary.

what turns people into frothing maniacs is the, often, arbitrary way it works.

nowhere is this more apparent than when you come to deal with the social services. it seems that pretty much each time you go to meet them their role is to trick you or trip you up with yet another arcane rule. (perhaps if they spent their time actually trying to help people there would be fewer of us unemployed).

unfortunately i have been making my trips to the local jobcentre far too many times for my liking.

today’s trip was different because of eid, fewer members of staff in attendance and fewer signers on. it meant that i had a new person to sign on with.

for those of you lucky enough not to have signed on the regular signing on day is pretty much a formality: ‘what’s your date of birth?’ ‘do you have your job search with you?’ ‘how has the job search been going?’ ‘sign here’. ‘next please’.

it is all a little dispiriting.

your jobsearch is a record of what you have done to look for work. you have to have a minimum number of job searches or else you are deemed not to be trying hard enough. ever since i have been signing on (and the last time i was doing it) i have always included those searches that led to nothing. so if i had scoured all the new jobs on reed.com and there was nothing there i could do – then i recorded that as a search, but that there was nothing suitable. same if i had looked on the asda website to see what jobs they had going (other supermarkets are also available for job searches).

every fortnight i have been handing over that job search and it has been handed back without much comment, mostly barely even looked at (the porn jobs i have listed have never been spotted or commented on).  so ever cycle i have continued on in the same old way.

today different person and ‘oh you only need to list the jobs you’ve applied for’.

thanks for that – just a shame the other members of staff hadn’t told me that when i started, or the second or third or even the 10^th time they noticed i was doing it wrong.  one would like to think that they didn’t tell me because they weren’t aware of the rules, but based on experience there i would say they just couldn’t be asked to make the comment because then they would have to do some work and engage with their client: not something they want to do.

and that is why we hate the people who sit behind desks and tick boxes and push papers about because that is all they want to do – they are just not interested in the people they are dealing with.

still they have a nice new office so that makes up for it.