Thursday, September 25, 2008

Unemployment: Not for Wimps

Because I didn't know how long I would be out of work due to Hurricane Ike, I filed for disaster unemployment assistance early last week at the urging of my co-workers. You never realize how you are actually living paycheck-to-paycheck until you are missing two of them.

Since that time I have been inundated with letter after letter from the unemployment office, each containing six different pages of what I am supposed to do to complete the unemployment claim.

The first step was to wait 46 minutes on hold for an unemployment representative. The second step was to give him all the intimate details of my life including how much my husband makes, whether or not I consider myself the primary bread winner for our household, and what I plan to name my first, second, and third child, should I chose to go that far.

Third, my employer has to fill out all the appropriate paperwork they received by October 1 verifying that all the information I gave was correct. And finally, I have to fill out who-knows-how-many pages of my own paperwork to verify that I am who I say I am. The problem is, I am not exactly smart enough to read or understand any one of the papers they've sent.

It's like they're trying to confuse me on purpose (admittedly, this is not hard to do).

It makes me want to pull my hair out and scream, "I don't want your stupid federal funding anyway!"

But the problem is, I DO want/need it. So, set up the hoops, unemployment office. I will jump through all of them.

Just think of all the things I will be able to do with my big, fat, unemployment check I will get in 4-6 months- like pay 1/3 of my light bill.

1 comment:

Holli said...

no, no. you're forgetting that the power was out. it might pay HALF your light bill!