Saturday, November 21, 2009

The hell of being unemployed and where exactly are the unemployment customer service offices located?

I've officially been unemployed since the end of September. Tried to make a claim and found that since I was disabled for most of last year, I have to fill out more paperwork and have my doctor verify that I was disabled. Took two weeks and several emails to get the forms, completed them, doctor took a couple of weeks to complete his portion because he was crazy busy (best chiropractor ever and I never share his name because he's already so hard to get to see). Beginning of November I hear from the unemployment department that I need to call immediately or claim will be denied. Course I call and go through a series of questions about why I was unemployed. Apparently I need to give the medical terms and explanations which confuses me since why did the doctor have to fill out his part of the form? I told the technician my arms were "tingly" which isn't medical enough. He can't read the doctor's handwriting or even mine for that matter. And in order to be considered disabled with the unemployment office, I have to actually be unable to do anything. Swear to god this is how the conversation goes....Tech: "So could you do another job in an office, like receptionist, you know picking up phones?"...Me: "No, I couldn't even hold my cell phone for more than a couple of minutes. BTW, the job of receptionist wasn't available at my office."...Tech: "Well, you could have gotten a job at another office."...Me: "Another office? When all I could do is possibly pick up a phone? And when I was previously making $25 an hour? What job would pay me to just pick up a phone, much less for $25 an hour?" Yeah, so my claim gets approved but I need to call the department in order to claim prior weeks. First day I try to call is Veteran's Day, office closed, which I don't learn until I go all the way through the automated system. Call again for the next 6 business days and the line rings fast busy. Finally send a fax and last Saturday morning at 8 am, get a message from the unemployment department that I need to call the number during the week, the same number I cannot get through on. Again spend all week trying to call, can't get through. Today talk to a human and get the claim reestablished but snafu! can't get benefits for the first 5 weeks because I "didn't make the claim." Oooookkkkkk....this is getting comical. Speak to supervisor and he can see all the times I've logged on to see if I can claim but this is not conclusive that I was trying to claim these weeks. Anyways, I have emails that I had with the unemployment department to get the disabled forms going and I'll fax those over. Not to mention that everything I receive from them has the wrong dates, which I correct every time. And the kicker, the first two people I spoke with on this claim had the strongest spanish accents and were unable to read my handwriting as well as the doctor's....which I had no problem reading. So now I'm wondering, is my state's unemployment department being outsourced to Mexico?????

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