Raging Against the Machine!

On 12th May, I decided to sign on.

Have you ever tried to do that? I thought I'd do it online, so I didn't have to go into town. To cut a long story short, 'they', the 'machine' screwed it up. Personally I think what happened is, is that they don't train the people who are meant to deal with such requests properly.

So, after hearing nothing, I went in on 20th May.

After wasting an entire morning re-filling in all the information that they lost, my claim went in. As of today, 8th June, I have received not one penny from them!

So I decided to give them a call to figure out what was going on.

0845 608 8532 option 2. This started at 12:30

Its now 16:40!

You keep getting the 'Im sorry none of our operators are available to take your call, please try later'

But occasionally, for no reason *what-so-ever* the phone system decides to put you through to a random department! Seriously, Im not joking! So then you have to start all over again!

By 3pm, I had decided to go into the job centre to use their phones - why should it cost me?! I got through to 3 random departments in the space of one and a half hours!

So, after wasting an entire afternoon trying to get some cash, I have managed to get absolutely nowhere!

I spoke to one of the 'drones from sector 7G' and they have taken my phone number (which they already have in triplicate!) so the benefits people can call me

I now completely understand why people get amazingly fucked off with 'the system'. And it is entirely the system I am frustrated with.

Let me explain...

Usually, there is some kind of 'hate figure' or 'bogey man' I can focus my anger on, but in this case the staff in the centre are absolutely great, there isn't one person who hasn't been polite or bent over backwards to help me. Even the people on the phone today agreed entirely with me that the phone system was unbelievable.

It is the unseen 'system' that they try and operate within that is the problem. I can't even vent my anger against an unseen entity - or even stick pins in it and invoke voodoo curses - 'they' have really thought this through!