Take away this posters origin and look at the text and images. Somewhere at the back of that unemployment line you will see me. Too small to make out, yes. But I’m there in the dole queue.
I have to walk past people with dangerous dogs who smoke rank cigarettes outside my Jobcentre plus. Sit next to alcoholics and the mentally ill; and listen to different automata every visit offer me advice.
At my last interview I was harangued for reading a book while waiting for my interviewer to zip into action. I was supposed to be checking the job board machine, but the very same jobs are available on-line, and I have an internet connection.
Occasionally I encounter a human being, who is sympathetic and offers encouragement. Who knows how to converse and understands the difficulty of my situation. But mostly I’m ritually humiliated by an ignorant box ticking drone.
I am an unemployed man. Who’s never been out of work, until now. One of the thousands made redundant because of the credit crunch. With skills a plenty I earned way above the national average. I moved South from the North East in the Eighties, to find a job. Survived the last recession by the skin of my teeth. But now I’m broke, impecunious. The last of my reserves dwindled back in November. I can’t borrow money, because I can’t pay it back. I can’t support my child, and I can’t find work. Bankruptcy looms.
I suffered a heart attack the day after my redundancy was confirmed. I am a slim, healthy eating, non smoking, marathon runner (Berlin, Madrid, Chicago and even London). I’m not old, but I now have an old mans pill popping regime. Have a face that bleeds like a pig when I shave, and no prospect of ever running a 3.30 marathon again.
Unlike the people who took the train in front of me on 7/7; or those who come back from Afghanistan badly maimed. I only have a nodding acquaintance with death. And I recovered quickly, was at a job seminar three weeks after my attack and operation. I was back running after a month. I was also running with a new business idea, registering a domain, buying equipment, making plans. My mind had shifted. I was now walking the tightrope without a safety net, and I didn’t care about the consequences.
Yesterday I sat in front of a claims advisor. My story was irrelevant. What mattered was the last three weeks. What mattered was whether I had selected a job from their list, regardless of its suitability. He had a box to tick, and was not going to diverge from his simple minded script. He countered my arguments, with a threat of withdrawing my benefits for six months. He also sarcastically commented how easy this was to do, and how surprised he was someone could survive on nothing for six months.
A person with permanent damage to their heart (an attack kill’s cardiac muscle) often suffers from angina. Stress and excessive activity can bring on such an attack. As the claims advisor made his threats, I experienced mild angina. It’s a tightness in the chest and I have a spray that can alleviate the symptoms if pain persists. But it’s next to useless at removing the cause.
Removing myself quickly from the situation and from the jobcentre was my only choice. So I played the game, and accepted a print-out of a job, and walked home dejected and dispirited. I called the number on the print-out, and was told applications were closing in 30 minutes. I took down details of the company’s website and checked the full job description. It was totally unsuitable, and bore little resemblance to the jobcentres specification.
On the way home I had toyed with the idea of Incapacity Benefit. And for a minute or so it felt like a quick and dirty solution to the box ticking sessions. Incapacity Benefit would erase my claimant advisor for good, but in his place would step another. Rather like Duncan Jones’s film Moon, where every three years a fresh clone is woken-up to man the moon-base. The new box ticker, with a different set of questions, would sound strangely familiar.
I thought about winning the lottery and walking up to my claims adviser, tearing up all the crap they have passed on to me. Dropping the scraps like confetti over his desk. But even that fantasy was tempered by the fact that these people are always at lunch or off sick.
And then I thought about an old Patti Smith song, and recited a few of the words.
“I WILL GET OUT OF THIS PISS FACTORY”
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