BENEFITS? MORE LIKE MEH-NEFITS
for the first time in my adult life i signed up for benefits. i was dreading the moment, but circumstances are what they are, so I applied online and got given an interview date. i had to go out and get a bootleg adidas tracksuit and a pack of marlboro reds to try and blend in. as it turns out, i was wrong.
it’s not like that anymore. in fact, it was all very uneventful. i sat down with some dude who talked to me about old punk bands, then told me ‘yeah, they say on the website you can backdate your claim for up to 6 months, but they won’t pay it, so you can forget about that part’. i was like - if that’s the case, why is it on the website? as a digital/ecommerce professional that was a big red flag. his answer was symptomatic of the state of the DWP when it comes to digital - a shoulder shrug and a ‘who knows?’
for the princely sum of 92 quid a week I get to keep doing what I normally do, ie apply for multiple openings a day, i just have to keep a very vague record of them. and come back every two weeks for a no more than 10 minutes catch up. I feel like i’m one of the easy ones for him, and i hope he appreciates that. I genuinely want a job, 92 a week doesn’t really cover my beer bill, let alone mortgage and food, so i do put the hours.
i can see that, on his part, the intention is there - he goes down a few jobsite rabbit holes with me, and to be fair some of his suggestions were good and worth pursuing. but it’s a revolving door of faces that quickly merge into one another, i’m sure, so i don’t envy his job at all. yes, I sound like a choosy beggar, but hey, we can’t all work for the government.
if i’m honest, it’s all a bit anticlimatic. i was expecting a shift in perspective, a change in my outlook, now that i am milking the taxpayers tits. again, something like more gold chains, more pitbull terriers, more hand tattoos. but it turns out i’m just taking back some stuff i paid for anyway, and the situation out there is so dire that everyone else is in the same boat, so there’s no stigma.
and it’s only 92 quid a week. I refuse to be embarassed for taking that. in east london, that’s two rounds of beer if your friends are not on fancy crafts. The government certainly owes me a drink after all the taxes i’ve paid, so cheers.
