Tuesday, December 11, 2007

"Pretend" Story Number Two

A woman came in to apply for food stamps. This woman looked awfully familiar...hmmm...where had I seen her before? Ah ha! She looked exactly like a woman who had worked here a few weeks ago, but with a different hairstyle.
Let's backtrack a little bit. I was in a training class with a few new people. One of the women, we'll call her Threnody, did not seem the type to be working here. She was very verbally abrasive and bias and opinionated. Don't get me wrong, I love opinionated people, even if their views are different from mine. It's just that in this job, one has to be unbias towards clients. And Threnody was not. Threnody worked there for a month or two and then quit, stating she was "headed for greener pastures".
Okay, so as I was saying, this women looked like Threnody's twin sister in a bad wig. She had a different name and a social-security number to go with that name. She had a story of woe. Well, guess what a person needs to get food stamps? A story of woe, and a picture ID. Yep, you guessed it. The worker who was interviewing her gave her food stamps.
When the interview was over, we clued Worker in on who we thought it was. All was not lost, part of the interviewing process in being fingerprinted. Guess who's also in the fingerprint database? County workers. We all waited with bated breath.
Lo and behold, this woman and Threnody had matching fingerprints! Amazing! The Welfare Police were called down. After Threnody was questioned (and claimed not to know how she got there) and her husband was called from work to come down (who she refused to recognize), Mental Health was also called over.
We're not sure what happened after that. Confidentiality and all that. We workers have our theories though...was she crazy? Having a bad day? Or something else?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ooh! *claps hands* Something else! Something else!

This was very suspenseful.

Thank you dah-link!

MWAH!