Friday 19 August 2011

Signing On (19/8)

My appointment with my adviser (assigned at the 3 month period for what would seem the rest of time) was for 10 past 10 in the am today. I turn up 5 minutes earlier and declare my arrival at the front desk only to find almost 15 minutes later that my appointment isn't with the adviser at all. At this point I'm about 20 minutes away from my bus which, if i miss, means i have to wander around town for 3 hours - and there's nothing to do in town, believe me. Unless you like charity shops (I don't dislike them at all, but that's all there are).
The desk wallah informs me quite matter of factly that I don't have an appointment as I had assumed, despite me producing the appointment card that I show her. A regular signing is performed instead. I find all this very confusing. Would it have been too difficult to just inform me of this in the first place - or at the time the appointment was made (4 weeks ago).
I can't help worrying this is the precursor to my finally being shipped off to the Work programme, which I am dreading. I am absolutely dreading it. I suffer an anxiety disorder and the very thought of having to deal with this sort of bullshit (again) is causing me serious grief. Unfortunately I have no way to know what's going on. To be fair it's possible the adviser was so booked up that a regular signing was substituted instead. They are apparently very busy on Friday's because no one wants to work on Fridays (you'd think they'd be contracted to, but apparently it isn't that simple). So now I'm worried that the postman, each morning, is going to leave me a nasty surprise. Despite what sites such as this would like to think I bet it's far from illegal. And I bet that if I go back to my GP (who is supposed to be organising an aspergers diagnosis - for all the good it will do) and say "this is one demand too far, I can't cope with this" he'll resort to the usual Victorian work ethic pseudo religious 'work heals all' crap that we always get told.
The unemployed are just not being heard or respected. Whatever schemes are dreamed up any problems you have facing up to them or dealing with them are never enough because being unemployed is just deemed so terrible. This is a myth. In fact I think the powers that be just don't like all those independent though alarms going off and people being allowed to think for themselves in case they realise "hey I'm getting shafted here!". I've got stuff I work on in my own time which has every chance of being successful. But the chances of the DWP funding that are somewhere between slim and none. Nope, better off being made to apply for endless zero hour contracts or desk jobs in pointless office bureaucracies.

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