The Trial of Unemployment:
The Trial of Unemployment: Part I
The Trial of Unemployment: Part IIAs the sun shone brightly through the polished window, Alexis stared dismally at the papers piled on her desk. She pushed aside foreclosure forms, the credit card bills, and increasingly impolite requests from her electric provider. Roughly pulling her laptop over the scattered paperwork, she lost her grip, and watched it tumble to the floor, with a crash as devastating as a meteor strike.
As she scooped it up, Keisha and Booker ran into the room, eyes anxiously staring as only eight year olds can.
“Are you alright, Mommy,” said Keisha as Alexis inspected the outside of the computer for damage. Booker tugged at his younger sister's sleeve. He didn't want to stand there, a witness to the justified frustration of an adult, he wanted to be watching cartoons while ignoring his grumbling stomach.
“Mommy...” said Keisha again when she received no reply. At last Alexis pushed her hair from her eyes, closed them, opened them, and managed an insincerely sincere smile. “Everything's alright. Why don't return to your play. I need to work.”
Collapsing into her seat, Alexis opened the laptop, and saw, not a cracked screen, but five keys loose from their moorings. From the other room, Booker and Keisha heard a momentary scream of rage. They huddled together, watching comic violence.
Alexis struggled to replace the keys, repeatedly slamming the desk in frustration. Sixty minutes, four keys were replaced, but the fifth remained unattached, unequivocally broken. With the computer partially repaired she tapped in the website, and saw it display the same sight she'd seen for six days, “Due to a surge of traffic, the unemployment application and assistance site is currently unavailable.” Turning aside, Alexis tried not to stare at the demands for money, which she didn't have. They started arriving two months ago when she lost her job as the head chef at the contemporary casual, The Eight Entrees.
She stood to stretch her legs, checked on the children, prepared their lunches, and helped them with their at home schoolwork before settling back at her desk. After an extended breathing exercise, which still ended in an exasperated sigh, she dialed the state's Department of Economic Opportunity. As she did, she unconsciously added another tally mark to the fifteen before it.
Ring... Ring... Ring... went dial, until, unable to withstand further suffering, she tapped the speakerphone, leaving it on the table. Remaining in the kitchen, she cleaned up Booker's lunch (Keisha hadn't finished her's), wiped the tablecloth clean of grease, and replaced clean, but scattered, utensils in their proper place. After fifteen minutes she sat down, picked up her phone, and saw that it had been answered a minute ago, for five seconds. The receiver had already ended the call. Alexis dialed again pushing hard against each button. Then she sat patiently, checking the website relentless, with no change in result.
Bored by the thirty minute wait, she turned on the TV, and saw Governor Don Santo on the news. She watched him respond to a question about unemployment, saying, “Nine times out of 10, the application’s incomplete, and I think if you have applied in that time period, and your application’s complete, and you qualify, I think 99.99 percent of those folks have been paid.” Unable to bear another indignity, Alexis turned off the TV.
Forty-five minutes into the unanswered phone call, she checked her email again. Still no reply. After submitting the application in mid march, the Economic Opportunity office waited five weeks to inform her (in her spam box) that the application was incomplete. They hadn't told her the reason. Checking it, she'd found her request for subsistence refused, because she had not recorded her middle initial. After completing the form, and informing the EO office by email, they still hadn't approved it, or provided any response. So her unemployment assistance, her family's source of security, remained unprocessed.
At last an automated voice prepared her for the imminent arrival of a real person. After two cursory questions....
“Hello, my name is Sarah, and I can't help you,” said the voice on the other side of the telephone.
“What?” replied Alexis, too flabbergasted to ask a more probing question.
“The governor has cut our staff, and restricted the ability of the lowest level employees to take any action. I'm certain you want help with the website, but I can't access it either, and I can't look at, or alter any information on any application you may have submitted.”
“Can I speak to someone who would be able to?”
“That would be my manager. I'll send you over to him.”
This wait was mercifully short, only ten minutes of mind-numbing boredom, before a man answered the line.
“My name is Roger. Can I help you?”
“My name is Alexis and I wanted to review my unemployment application with someone.”
“I'm really sorry,” and in her mind Alexis, who was generally patient and empathetic couldn't help briefly considering that he was in fact, not sorry, “but that's a different department. We only respond to website inquiries, and it's down now, so there isn't anything we can do.” She wanted to tell him that she had submitted her application by the site, so wasn't she his responsibility, but when he said, “I'll refer you to who you need,” she meekly said, “Sure.” But she wasn't surprised, though still frustrated, when a voicemail answered, “This is Denver Jackson. I will be out of the office for the months of April, May, June, and July. Please leave a message, and I, or one of my colleagues, will get back to you shortly.”
She put down the phone slowly, a wetness at the corner of her eyes. She needed to control it, or it would move to her throat, and how could she call again, with the evidence of her weakness for strangers to hear. Or should she even bother?
Before Alexis arrived at a decision, the door opened, and Derek walked in. Tossing aside his smock, he walked towards her.
“How was your day?”
“The usual unpleasantness,” she replied, diverting her face to regain composure. Then she turned to him with the brightest smile, which she tried to feel to its fullest. “No one with any power has any interest in helping us.”
He yawned, and looked away, saying “We'll make it.”
She knew his stress, how they kept taking turns avoiding each other's expressions, and how losing his serving job, working part time at the local fast food joint to make up for it, was wearing him down. But she couldn't help herself, “Only if we receive aid, sooner rather than later.”
He turned back, mouth open, and she knew he was preparing to deliver a retort, one he didn't mean. It was only frustration speaking. So she interrupted, “I'm going tomorrow to the office to speak to someone in person. Finally get this problem resolved.”
“Oh,” he said, “But be careful. Wear a mask and stay six feet away from everyone.”
She hated to remind him that the car had been sold so they could pay, briefly, for more necessary goods. “Could you drive me?”
“What about the kids?” he said, looking away again.
“My mom can visit, and watch them in the backyard. I'll walk home, even if it takes a few hours. I want to arrive early in the morning in case it's busy.”
“Ok, we'll do that.”
Later that night, lying in bed, she couldn't stop the spinning thoughts in her head. At last, in an effort to calm the whirlwind she tapped out a message on her phone. Then she paused. Should she? Her finger hovered over the send button. But her sense of caution, undercut by desperation, crumbled. She said, to the whole world, or at least the few who were watching, “I am so frustrated with Don Santo, and his byzantine unemployment insurance system.”
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