Why Can’t I Just Have My Goddamn Unemployment Check?
After three long years of working a job that was gradually making me dumber, I finally got laid off. Here in Los Angeles, this is every aspiring-so-and-so’s dream. Now I will have 18 months time to write more, time to record more videos, time to pursue my dreams, and the whole time I will collect small weekly checks from the government. It’s just their little way of telling me “We’re sorry that the economy is so shitty that the unemployment rates for college graduates are officially the highest they’ve ever been. Oops, our bad.”
Awesome right? I would tend to agree, but it turns out the government can never really make anything too simple for the hard (non) working folks out here.
After an awkward encounter with my former boss while I stumbled in hungover to receive my severance check, I sat with the PR lady at my old job and filled out the unemployment application. Seemed easy enough: check a few boxes here, put your SSN there, check a few more boxes there, and then checks should magically pour into your mailbox once a week.
That hasn’t been the case so far. After sending out 3 claim forms, only to have them all returned, I decided it was time to call the dreaded EDD 800 number. What a bad idea. The EDD hotline is like a labyrinth that you’ll never escape from minus David Bowie in tights or any awesome animatronics. They design this automated menu knowing that the people who are calling it are broke, low on anytime minutes, and that they will never even be able to make it the point where you can press numbers for an option. I was near panic attack by the time it even got to the point of asking me if I’d like to proceed in English or Espanol. The menu is long. Longer than the strange white hair that consistently grows on my left love-handle.
After wasting 16 minutes and 42 seconds of anytime minutes on my phone, calling 3 different 800 numbers to establish a PIN, returning to the original menu, and finally navigating through to the “Talk to A Real Person” option, I find out that the line of other saps in my same situation is too long to get through today. It tells me to try calling back tomorrow. Great, thanks assholes, that was 17 anytime minutes I could’ve used to prank call your mother’s house with.
I still don’t have a solution to why my claims keep getting sent back. After the 800 number debacle, I called a local EDD office that I found out only helps with job placement, not actual unemployment check problems. They still managed to transfer me to three different operators before telling me that fact and finally sending me to the voicemail of someone who has yet to call me back.
Let’s get it together America. It’s the holidays, and your boy got laid off right in time to miss his two biggest checks and a Christmas bonus. I’m running out of the dry freezed coffee and off brand Cheerios I’ve been surviving on, why can’t I Just have my goddamn unemployment check?
