Another in my series of sour reflections on being unemployed...I turned up to Southern House on York Road in Leeds to sign on as unemployed. They gave me an appointment card which told we where and when to go to sign on. If you miss appointments they automatically finish your claim of course so it's important you get this right. The appointment card had an address in Stourton on it - sort of in Leeds but in the kind of motorway junction industrial nowheresville a few miles out of town.
Reasoning that they were idiots I ignored the address on the appointment card and turned up to Southern House again at the next designated appointment time - this was of course the right place. But what if I hadn't known that there was no way that people were going to Stourton to sign on? What if I hadn't known that the Post Office (or Royal Mail or whatever they are) have a big office there and that if I turned up I'd find myself at the post office depot? But this is the card they give to everyone - people who don't necessarily know all this stuff.
So, we have a large, bureacratic and systems based organisation which insists on its clients getting times and dates and places right or they won't get any money - they're handing out appointment cards to first time users giving them a list of times and dates and an address which is specifically not the place where they want people to go.
In a related matter they give you appointment times. They consistently run 25 minutes behind these times. Another good example to the great unwashed eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment