The Workshop

So I am unemployed. You probably don't care. I don't blame you. There is a lot of it going around, and my situation is pretty middling as far as sucking. I don't have kids to support. I have two kindly and understanding roommates. I don't have a shitload of overhead. I was laid off so i am collecting unemployment. Lots of people have it worse, so I am not here to complain about my lot in life. (maybe later) There is a catch to that last one though. Sometimes the State of California summons you forth to see them. This is mandatory lest they cut you off from the governmental teat. This post is about going to see them.

My car broke shortly after I lost my job. I fixed it for a decent amount of money. It broke again. Fuck you car. So its public transportation for me. Which is fine, the commuter trains and buses in this area are both fairly well run and effective. So I Google my destination. The commuter rail drops me off 1/3 of a mile away from the office as the crow flies, but Google claims that for me to walk there I must walk in a vaguely U-shaped arc to get there on foot, and it will be approximately a mile. I am not a fast walker, so i arrive an hour early for my 9:30 appointment for personal job search counseling, leaving enough time for me to walk a mile and then cool down afterward so i don't enter my session as the sweaty fat fuck. I will show up as the cool and calm fat fuck. I get off the train and look in the general direction of the office I need to go to. Google has the street listed as an "expressway", which is why I imagined I would have to walk the mile long circuit to get in. The "expressway" has a sidewalk that goes directly to the front door of where I am going. Fuck you Google.

I arrive at the unemployment office more than a half hour early. It is the perfect storm of what I picture bureaucratic hell looks like. It has the gray padded 3/4 height cubicle walls, which I imagine give you the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a cubicle without actually blocking the awkward noises coming from the mouth-breather who occupies the cubicle next to you. The office looks for all intents and purposes like the principal's office would look like in High School if they stuck him/her out in the porta-classrooms. You get in line to wait to be "checked-in" by two people with all the charm of DMV workers. When it is discovered I am there because i got a "letter" I am dismissed to a waiting area, also much like the DMV. It is a small forest of small and uncomfortable chairs the government must buy by the container ship load. I stare at a water (i hope) stain on the side of the cubicle in front of me and try to figure out if it looks more like Ellen Degeneres or a water buffalo mounting a haystack. I try to ignore the smell of this place, a distinct odor of hopelessness with the sharp tang of desperation. Oh yeah, and sweat. Lots of really old sweat. More and more people show up with letters just like mine in hand. I am getting the feeling my personalized counseling session is becoming less personalized by the elevator load.

At last we are summoned into a large room. There are about 30-40 of us in a big conference room, and at first we are asked to turn in our sheets that show how we have duly looked for work over the past 14 days. I look at the form I filled out the night before and curse my shitty penmanship for the 4,523rd time in my life. Even if I try hard I write like a walrus during an earthquake. Its not pretty. Once we have turned it in the lady who is leading our little group through counseling starts her spiel. Within approximately 3 sentences I am enraged. I am a proud guy in a less than proud situation. Her tone is horrific and grating against my ears, dripping with condescension. If anybody had talked to me like this in 2nd Grade I would have been pissed. At age 30? I am near catatonic with rage, subtly rocking in my too small hard government chair and calculating how long i can make it if I tell the government to take their check and shove it(not far enough). I check my fury as she walks us through an informational packet, twitching when she says things like "I swear, when people get off that elevator they leave their brains behind..." or if someone raises their hand for a question they are brusquely told to wait until the session is over.

By question time I am counting backwards from ten in my mind and trying not to fantasize about burning down a federal building. At that point the worm turns. My fellow unemployed open their mouths, and I understand. I understand the place that the women who is leading the class is coming from. Honestly I fear for my IQ, just being in the same room with some of those people must have sapped some of my intelligence. I am probably far from the smartest person in that room, but the people with their hands up were disconcertingly dumb. One in particular was particularly disturbing. She looked like a dark haired female version of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. No, seriously. Right down to a wispy but unapologetic mustache of black hair that graced her upper lip. Her voice is laden with the petty officiousness as she debates a niggling detail with the woman running the class. I don't hit women, but I briefly consider whether a woman with a mustache might be some kind of exception.

I don't think i have changed my position on one person so swiftly or drastically in my life. I now feel for and admire the woman running the workshop like I have rarely felt before. I picture having to do one or two of these workshops per day, suffering through the inane questions from people who do not possess the common sense of a child. I imagine this madness, putting myself in her shoes, and the only possible ending i come up with is smashing my face into a brick wall until I am graced with the sweet relief of unconsciousness. Every person in this room is an adult, but their inability to comprehend that if we fail to update our resume every 60 days it will be swept from the State system is baffling. Comic Book Woman claims her resume has been on longer than that and is still there. I wonder how she can know if it is still there if she has not visited it. I re-visit the question of punching a mustachioed woman.

At long last my personal counseling session is over. The long trek from disquiet and dread coming to this place, followed by ennui, then a barely contained rage, a dollop of empathy, all smothered by the soul crushing hopelessness that surrounds it all is a lot. I am emotionally wrung out. I shamble the 1/3 mile back to the commuter train, and settle into a seat, plugging my iPod into my ears and trying to forget about my sad little morning Odyssey.