If you've been reading this log since the beginning you'll remember my distaste for the California DMV. It's a place where everyone is required to go if you want to drive a vehicle and it's run by a bunch of minorities who know they can't get fired. They deal with shitty people day in and day out and it shows. Image that kind of clusterfuck only now rather than just the normal amount of people trying to get appointments (which the DMV is staffed for) there are hundreds of thousands! That's the California Employment Development Department.
When calling the EDD a machine picks up and tells you that they're receiving so many phone calls that there is absolutely no way they can answer. They instruct you to file for unemployment online or call the national unemployment assistance hotline.
Lets back up. The internet is the first place I go for everything (information, dates, times, work, pleasure, a wife!) so of course I started there. It all seems pretty straight forward, make sure you have your drivers license and former employers address handy and fill out the online form. Well, right off I couldn't complete the first page of the form. The first question they ask is if you've been employed in CA for the last 18 months... Well, no, actually I haven't. So then I click the "next" button and it takes me to a page that says I must call the California EDD office (800-300-5626). I figure no big deal until I tried to call. The answering message says to call the national office. Well that's easy, they even supply you with the number. So I call the national office number and they give me back the California EDD number (800-300-5626) and say I have to call locally in order to be helped.
"But wait, their message just told me to call you and now you're telling me to call them?"
"Yes, that's what they system says."
"You can't help me with anything?"
"No sir. Thanks for calling." Click.
WTF!! The federal and local governments are just pointing their fingers at each other and I'm stuck in the middle!
God damn it. I picked up the phone and called the California EDD again. And again. And again. About every 15th call I could get a different recording that actually let me touch tone in some selections. I wrote these selections down (1, 2, 1, 2, 7). The recorded voice made it sound like I would be connected to someone and I would go through all the prompts only to be told at the end that there were already too many people on hold and it would hang up. Arrg!!
Considering my options (none) and the exorbitant amounts of time I now have (unemployed) I hit redial for about an hour. And then, something close to a miracle happened: A human being answered the phone!! I was so happy I almost cried. Through that human I was able to file for unemployment but the story isn't over yet. She told me that they would next contact me by mail and that I would have to fill out some forms. At least to me, it seems like that leaves a lot of room for error. No claim number, no phone number to call them at, just an envelope in the mail arriving at some unknown time.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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