http://www.socyberty.com/Work/Job-Centre-Distractions-1.653273

I avoided the waiting crowd and took my place behind one of the many available job-seeking machines.

I press the button marked ‘This weeks jobs’. I was delighted to find 1,397 vacant positions. Wow. This is going to be easy. I then notice seven cleaning vacancies, one as an energy salesmen with required driving licence (I don’t drive), and the other working in recruitment. Ah the irony. The rest of the jobs are over one hundred miles away. I can sympathise slightly with the view held by Tory Norman Tebbit when he claimed you just have to ‘get on yer bike’ and find a job, but this would be taking it to the extreme. The high-tech machine fills you with confidence, and then in a split second outlines the dire reality you find yourself in. Thousands of jobs, just not where you live!

I am awoken from my barrel of self-pity by the raised voices coming from the pulpit. The security guard is now stood across from a young lad, late teens early twenties maybe, socks tucked into tracksuit bottoms, and a hat that would surely fall from his head were the security guard to breathe any harder.

“Your appointment was 2 hours ago. It has been explained to you before that if you don’t make the appointment you do not receive your benefit.”

“But I need my cash man” shouts the young whipper-snapper.

You have to admire his determination to retrieve what he believes his rightly his. His money. His cash. His wages for being unemployed. He seems to have forgotten that when you are unemployed, the government only gives you the benefits if you agree to job seek. Hence the name. You must turn up for the fortnightly interviews. To explain how you are looking for a job.

“You have to arrange another appointment today, turn up, on time, with proof of what jobs you have searched for, and only then can we clear your payment. “

“As if man, all that work . . . OK.” The young man agrees, seemingly lost for an argument to the security guards efficient and authoritative response.

At least now I can appreciate why ‘The Centre for Job Seekers’ has security guards. Things can get pretty emotional in this place. You can imagine that the security guards are fluent in Jobcentre speak. They must have said it a thousand times. Maybe that is why they all lost all enthusiasm for customer service. Because surely that’s what we are? Job-seeker = Customer. Or are we? It seems to me that the security is in place to protect the staff working AT the jobcentre. Presumably because all jobseekers are raging maniacs, fuelled with a drive and desire to beat the rest of the unemployed to the scraps of available jobs. That’s the rat race. Unemployment is popular these days.

Because being jobless is the ‘IN’ thing, what with the credit crunch and the economic downturn. This has got to be an advantage. It means more characters in the club. Single mums. Students. Men in suits. Men in scruffs. ‘Hockey mums’. Rugby dads. Then I hear my name. I walk over to the awaiting staff member. I mentally prepare for the upcoming interview.

“Could you just wait on that chair, and your advisor will call you into her office in a minute. Thank You.”

I nod. Shaking my inner head in disbelief at the fact that I have to wait. And wait….