Gamer Girls

My information is about 20 years out of date but this is how things were when I was doing it.

If you have less than £2000 in liquid assets and you’re unemployed, you’re entitled to Job Seekers Allowance and Housing Benefits.

Housing benefits are the cost of your rent up to a certain amount. I don’t remember the amount but they’ll pay all of your rent as long as it’s under this maximum figure. I only got this briefly, towards the ends of my time of not working, because the vast majority of places that I lived were sub-leases. So I wasn’t on any lease. You need to provide a lease in order to get Housing benefits.

Job Seeker’s Allowance is money to provide for your various living expenses. Food, travel, whatever. It was £59/week and then it was raised to £72/week in about 2007.

In order to get the money, you have to go to a JobCentre Plus. This is an office building where a bunch of scumbags work. They’re all government employees and their job is to do the administration around dispensing of benefits allowances.

After you fill in the application to get whatever benefits you’re entitled to, you have to go back to this office every two weeks to “sign on”. This is a two minute “interview” with your “job seekers advisor”.

But before you speak to your advisor, you have to first go to the “job points”. This is a computer terminal, of sorts, that lists various job vacancies in the area. You had to find two job ads that you liked and print them out. These computer terminals would print out the job ad. Then the idea is that you’re supposed to apply for this job. Just whenever. In your spare time.

So you take these two printed out job ads to your “advisor”. He’ll look at them, maybe, and then sign your Job Seeker’s Allowance Booklet. You had a booklet that you had to bring with you. I don’t remember what the booklet said. Something about your responsibilities if you want to continue to collect Job Seekers Allowance, maybe. But the main thing is that there’s a bunch of spaces for signatures. This is what the booklet is for.

Sometimes the “advisor” will ask how your job search is going. You said, “It’s going fine.” And then he’ll nod. That’s it.

The first time I went to one of these places, I thought that they would help with finding a job. No. That’s not what it’s about. It’s just to facilitate the handing out of benefits. Make sure that you’re still alive and living in the area and therefore entitled to benefits. If you miss one of these appointments, your benefits stop. I don’t know if you have to re-apply or they automatically restart the next time you appear.

So who are these “advisors”? In my experience, in London, they were overwhelmingly racial minorities who were one paycheque away from claiming benefits themselves. These people didn’t know shit about finding work. You wouldn’t want to get job advice from these people. If they knew how to find a job, they wouldn’t be working here.

Sometimes they’ll mix things up and give you some bizarre task to do. And if you don’t do it, they take away your benefits money for two weeks or however long they want.

So I went to one place, and this black woman who was the “advisor” was requiring everyone to call…somebody. It was some other person in the Department of Work and Pensions. That’s the government body responsible for benefits.

It was just busy work. The person she wanted you to call had nothing important to say. The whole process is pointless busy work.

So I got on the phone, it was a landline. There was a row of like payphones that you could use. But you didn’t have to pay for them. This was like a way for people to use the phone for the purposes of contacting prospective employers. You weren’t allowed to use the phone for any other reason, and there was a security guard who would walk around and make sure that nobody was making any kind of personal calls.

I remember one security guard, a black guy, remonstrating with a South Asian guy because this guy was calling somebody about the bank trying to repossess his house due to him not making his mortgage payments.

Anyway, this woman wanted us to use the phones. Earlier, I saw this woman having a discussion with an angry Polish guy. The Polish guy was expressing his exasperation at not being able to find a job. He was telling her all of his work experience and she just kept saying, “It’s irrelevant. It’s irrelevant. Go to the phones.”

I’m on the phone. I dial the number that this woman gave me. It just keeps ringing. I let it go for five minutes. No response. I try again. I let it ring for ten minutes. No response.

There’s no recording or anything. “You are now number 24 in the queue”. Nothing like that. No music. It just rang.

So I go to this woman and I say that nobody’s picking up. Can I just speak to somebody in person?

Oh, that’s what this was. These people on the phone were a substitute for speaking to your “advisor” in person. I guess there was a shortage of staff that day so it was being done remotely.

The woman says, “You just have to stay on the line. Somebody will pick up.” I said that I waited ten minutes and nobody picked up. She said, “I know. I have the same number. Somebody will pick up. Nobody will be here in person until 2:00. Just try again.” It was like 12:00 at the time. So I said, “It will be 2:00 before they pick up. Can I just come back and speak to somebody in person?” She laughed. I said, “No, I’m serious.” She said, “Try again. I promise that they’ll pick up.”

So I went back and it was like 45 minutes before anyone picked up. And they just said whatever they had to say for two minutes and I was good for the next two weeks.

Every time you move to a different borough, you have to go to a different JobCentre and re-apply. Each borough has their own rules. Sort of.

I went to one place and there was a white guy working there. A white English guy. I thought, “This is weird.” He was like the receptionist. He would “greet” you as you enter and make sure that you had your job seeker’s booklet and then you’d wait for the next available “advisor”.

Most of the “advisors” were South Asian women. And not British Asians. These were straight up immigrants from Bangladesh or something. And I remember one woman sitting there with her massive gut hanging out of her sari. Most of the women wore saris. Can this woman not feel her gut hanging out of her sari? Does she think that this is sexy? Cover up. This is fucking gross.

This place also had my favourite “advisor”, the Nigerian gangster. He was an immigrant from Nigeria. He had a prominent grill and wore a bunch of chains and rings.

He suggested that I should start a business. With what? I have no money. I have no business experience. I have no idea for a business. What is he suggesting that I sell? Khat? Khat was a popular drug at the time with the African immigrant community. It was legal at the time but they outlawed it in maybe 2009.

So I decline his fucking idiotic suggestion that I start a business. And he says, “Okay. Some people like working for other people.”

Yeah. Like you, you fucking faggot. You’re working at the Job Centre. And look at the state of you. You look fucking ridiculous. You couldn’t get any kind of respectable job looking like this, you fucking braying jackass.

Everybody hated going there. Everybody knew that it was a total waste of time. And these advisors were only there to try to find ways to take your benefits away. They were required to revoke a certain number of benefits every week or whatever the time period was.

Oh, and one day I went there and the receptionist, the only white English person I ever saw working in a JobCentre, suddenly grew a straggly red beard and was wearing a Muslim robe. I thought that it was a joke at first so I stifled a laugh. It was no joke. This fucking lunatic converted to Islam and he went all in.

The area had a large Muslim population. One day, I overheard some local devout Muslim talking about how proud he was of this guy and asking how he’s finding Islam. Complete fucking joke. The guy was clearly mentally ill, as were a majority of the staff. Nobody cares.

I went to a new JobCentre, after moving yet again, and I went through the whole process of re-applying. It was always automatic. I was getting benefits before so of course I’m eligible to get them again.

But this time, they said that my application was rejected. I don’t remember if an explanation was given.

So I get this letter and I go to the JobCentre and ask for an explanation. The South Asian “advisor”, who I think was British, was sympathetic but he said there’s nothing he can do. If I disagree with the decision, I can appeal.

So I appealed. The appeal goes to an actual court so it’s not some hokey bullshit like a Department of Work and Pension internal review panel or something.

I set out the reasons why I’m entitled to Job Seeker’s Allowance. I live in the UK, I have less than £2000 in the bank, and I’m looking for work. That’s it. Those are the only requirements. I had been living in the country for a year and a half at this time.

I get a letter a month later from a judge wherein he asked the council (the JobCentre people) to explain why they rejected my application.

Maybe a month later, they reply saying that I’m not a genuine job seeker.

A month later, another letter from the judge asking the council to explain why they say that I’m not a job seeker.

No reply.

So it’s time to go to court. I get there and they say, “Oh, no. The council has agreed that you’re entitled to benefits.”

This whole time, I was getting no money. I was living in a squat. I was nearly homeless. And no sensible explanation was ever given for why they refused the application.

So I got everything that I was owed, back-dated and I proceeded to get Job Seekers Allowance from these people.

One of the last times I went there, the receptionist, who was a Middle Eastern immigrant, I think, was just having a private conversation with some member of the public who she knew. And the queue is backing up. She sees that I’m standing there but she continues to have this private conversation with her friend.

So I say fuck this. I go over to one of these “advisors”, some black woman, and say, “I’ve been waiting for 15 minutes. This receptionist is just having a private conversation, can you sign me off?” So she did.

The people working at these places are incredible rude. They’re incompetent. They’re often mentally ill. But this is all by design. Of course the government can create a stable and professional process for distributing benefit money that treats people with respect and dignity. They don’t want to. They like making it as difficult as possible for impoverished people to get their £59/week. They like hassling the poor. They like keeping people down.