Monday, September 03, 2007

Why It Takes So Long

If you're in my city, you wonder why it take so long for your worker to get your welfare done. I'll tell you.

Your worker gets to work at 7:30am. Spends 30 minutes listening to voicemails and going through Inbox. At 8:00am there is usually a training or meeting of some kind that lasts until 9:00am. At 9:15am your worker gets an application, and spends 15 minutes gathering the "before" information. (This could be finding your case, checking your income, etc.) Worker than conducts interview until about 10:15 to 10:30am, if it went smoothly with no hidden complications. Worker than has another interview, same deal, hopefully done andback to desk by lunchtime, which is 12:00pm.

Lunch lasts until 12:30pm. Another 30 mintues is spent going through voicemails from that morning, and if Worker is lucky, actually returning those messages. At 1:15pm comes another application, and again an hour later.

Wow, it's 3:30pm, where did the time go? Worker will go back to desk and again field voicemails, most of them from people who have been calling all morning wondering why hasn't my worker called me back auugh omg wtf??.

If your worker is exteremely lucky, they will manage to sneak in a few minutes of processing your case over a few days. The more messages you leave? It doesn't make your case go ANY faster. It actually makes it go SLOWER, because we're spending all of our processing time listening to your fifteen whiny fucking messages about how your friend got her case done faster than yours!

I'll bet your friend didn't call 30 times and hang up after every other one. I do have CallerID. I know it's you.

Welfare Rules

1. Don't offer to show me your hideous oozing smelly gaping wound. I know you need to see a doctor. You wouldn't be here just for fun. Don't show me, it won't make your case go any faster.

2. Don't offer to show me your tattoos. Yes, I know I have tattoos, and under other circumstances I would love to discuss body art, but please don't start unbuckling your belt while asking me if I want to see something. This will make me panic and call Security.

3. Turn off your fucking cell phone. I don't have time for you to answer personal calls. Why would you want to tell everybody who calls you that you're at the welfare office?

4. Your screaming child is not my problem. It is your problem. Ignore them, go ahead. However, I will remember you and your little monster, and I will make a note in your case for the next worker that reads "Children not welcome at interview."

5. Remember what you told the previous worker just a month ago. Everything you told them is in the case. I know what you said, and changing your story and blatantly lying about it is going to get you one thing...I'm gonna' send Fraud out on you just because I can.

Follow these simple Welfare Rules and we'll all get along that much better.

I'm Awake Godammit

I love the weekends and the weekends love me. What did I get done this weekend?
Lessee....got home from work about 5pm Friday. Crawl to bed, sleeeeeeep until Satuday morning 9am. I get up, manage to stay awake until 11am. Then sleep some more. In fact, I sleep until Sunday morning. (There are intermittant periods of peeing during all this, don't worry. I do have to pee quite frequently.)
What are the children doing all this time while I'm passed out? I don't know, I'm sleeping, okay?
So on Sunday I wake up at 10am and take the girls to get doughnuts. Yum, doughnuts, back in bed at 1pm, sleep until late Sunday evening, when I get up to eat a sandwich and some crackers. And then some TUMS, because everything I eat gives me heartburn.
Back to sleep until Monday morning, 'bout 10:30am. I get up, manage to make it to WalMart with the girls to buy shaving cream and pencils. While I'm there, I buy bread and milk and cereal, because I know that this is my only trip to town I have energy for, so I better make it worthwhile. I buy some Smarties too. What the heck.
I manage not to crawl back to bed until 2:00pm. And I sleep. And I sleep. I wake up at 5:30pm, throw the take-n-bake pizza in the oven (which I also had gotten in town. How resourceful I am.) and feed the children.
I then sit in a fog on the couch, feeling like crap, because that's how I feel all. the. time. Fiance asks me when I'm going to the doctor because "this sleeping thing is not normal." Getting up to get a drink, my mother confronts me with questions about when I'm going to the doctor, because "this sleeping thing is not normal." They're in cahoots. And I'm just fucking tir--
-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.