I was not particularly pleased by the phone call, but then again, most phone calls tend to be tedious affairs in the first place. But let me back up a minute.
I am on unemployment, and have been, on and off for the better part of two years, with stints working that are long enough to keep me on the rolls, but nothing ever lasts. I try to stay employed, but either through circumstance or random dumb luck, I just don’t seem to find anything that lasts. That unemployment is a crutch, but a necessary one, employment being how one props oneself up in this world, when unemployed, you either use a crutch, or you starve.
I am not a fan of starving, thin though I am.
So when the money that I would have gotten, which would have gone to paying bills and buying food, didn’t show up, I was concerned. Not for myself mind you. My needs are few. The people I pay to keep a roof over my head, and my utilities, they tend to get annoyed when they don’t get their money. Pimps they are, really, for the dollar. They concern me, annoy really, but they do provide a service, for which they charge too much and from which I get too little for the money, but that is another story. Food and shelter concern me, but those are minor concerns at the moment. The wolf is close, but he isn’t at the door just yet.
My wife has a few bucks coming in, and can help a bit, though not as much as I would like. She does have her own bills to pay, and freelance writing, which is what she does, unfortunately takes tons of time and pays little.
Enough back story. Back to the phone call.
I call up the people at the unemployment, curious more than anything, just wanting to find out what’s going on. After the usual interminable wait using their phone system (para espanol marque el dos, press 3 for more options, press 4 to f*ck yourself, etc,etc,etc…) and running through the menu options twice and listening to the system tell me I could do this on-line (which I couldn’t, i tried) several times, I got to speak to an actual human.
I gave her the same info I had given the phone system, and told her my issue. I told her that I wanted to find out what was going on with my money. I was polite as was she, we being two professionals (or some such silliness.) She initially did not have any answers, which didn’t faze me. It’s a big system she has to run through, fairly complex, it has to handle every unemployed person In New York state, and I believe there are more than just a few of us out there.
Then she found it, and told me what the issue was. The people who I had been working for, for all of 5 weeks, who had let me go because of lack of work, officially, have decided to fight the claim.
After asking about what has happened from my former employers end of things, I find not much has been done. Nothing mailed from unemployment to me explaining what is going on, asking for my side of the story. Which means no judgment rendered just yet about the validity of my case. I thank the woman on the other end for her help, tell her to have a nice weekend, and hang up.
Am I annoyed? Ya, but I put off by it? Not really. Not because it isn’t a daunting prospect to have the last prospect of financial help shrivel up and die on me. It is. But the reason I am not put off by it is that I have going for me the fact that I was told that I was being let go because of lack of work. They had nowhere to put me. That is how it was put to me, so if it comes to a fight, I just tell them that.
Not that I expect the truth to set me free, nothing silly like that, but any claim against me would have to argue that I am not allowed to receive benefits because I do not deserve them. If I was let go for “lack of work” and that is the reason I was given officially, even if the real reason was very much something other than that, they should not be able to fight it and win, to my knowledge.
Doesn’t mean I will win, I’m not going to get cocky about things here. Nothing is ever that easy with me.
I think I need to explain one thing about how I lost my last job here. Several employees, me and 2 others, and the boss got into an argument (over some stupid books,) and we 3 employees were canned. But I was told that I was only being written up for that, and was being reassigned. The paperwork I signed off on did not say the words “fired”, “terminated”, or anything else of that nature on it. It was a write-up.
The reason I was being let go is that that boss didn’t want to work with me any more, and since they had no other openings, and I was only a temp, they were letting me go.
Not gonna cry over stuff I can’t control. Worry until what little hair I keep on my head falls out? Ya, but cry? Hmmmm…. Methinks not.
It’s only a few more weeks before this claim is finished, and I have to re-file anyway, because my initial 52 weeks is up the last Sunday of this month. And I am hoping to be employed by then (BTW, the bitterness of my last article on job hunting, was born of anger at my inability to find what I needed to find, nothing more. Things have evened out since then.) I am pushing as hard and in as many directions as I can to get a job. I’ll land something soon enough. If I have to, and I hold out for a while longer, I should be able to get back into Sotheby’s after things settle down there, and then life will get better.
It can’t get significantly worse.
I hope.
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That’s it from here, America. G’night.
Casus Belli 