Iceland: It's a keeper...
Back to me. as you may remember from my previous POST, I had been jerked around by the Job Centre; having to go home to call the office I had just been in, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, the weekend rolled to its inevitable conclusion and I got up reasonably early on Monday morning to attend my Indepth Review at the Job Centre. From its flowery description one would expect it to be a lengthy process of interviews, of having to endure a torrent of being pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered. I half supposed I would be tied to a chair in a small room lit only by a single light bulb, the floor awash with urine and faeces from previous interviewees. A hard nosed guard would enter the room and scream at me in an unintelligible language whilst slapping my face. This would continue for days whilst they kept me awake by throwing buckets of icy water over me. Finally I would crack and give them the details of the work I had been doing. When it would be ascertained that I had worked less than sixteen hours I would be released without a single word, left standing in the bright sunlight, clothed only in filthy rags and starving.
'Mr Sotheran to Room 13, Please'
As it happened the actual 'Indepth Review' consisted of me telling the guy behind the desk that I had done 14hrs of work and then me signing two boxes on a form to confirm it. He asked me if I had any questions. I paused. Yes I had a question. I asked him why had the Job Centre had dragged me down to town to sign two boxes. Couldn't I have filled the form in online? Couldn't I have signed it when I signed on the previous Wednesday? (I knew the answer to the last one, if that fat sack of shit from Wednesday wasn't going to even bother setting up an interview for me, then she was damned if she was going to produce a form for me to sign, to avoid me having to come back.) You know what he said? He said yes, you could have filled it in when you signed on. In fact he gave me the sheet and said if I get any more work fill it in and hand it in when I sign on again in two weeks. The problem was not me getting up early on Monday morning, it was the inconvenience of having to do something I could have done the previous fucking week. The thing is, Monday is a day for looking for work, it's the start of the week, people know what is in store for them as they start on a new site. Signing two boxes took me out of the job market for over an hour. It's like the Job Centre are punishing people for actually going out and finding work.
Don't even think of getting a job!
But then this is what the Job Centre is all about, inconvenience. They make you attend Back To Work sessions which take time out of your day whilst they state the fucking obvious. They force an unwanted career path on you (more of this later when I attend my second phase back to work interview...), they drag you down to the office to sign two boxes when you could actually be looking for work. I don't understand it and I don't think anyone ever will. It's a riddle tied up in a big dollop of shit.
