So I had my final exams. I get my results in a couple of weeks. It’s a form of purgatory. You’re neither a student nor a graduate until you find out.

I had my phone interview with the lovely people at the government today, the department that handles the jobless (Centrelink). I’m now officially classed as unemployed. You can tell it’s a phone call with Centrelink when there is more music (while on hold) than there is actual conversation. You can tell you are at a trendy restaurant when there is more of the plate than there is of the food so I guess I must be amongst the avant-garde of the jobless.

The next call was with some job search agency. I could swear the receptionist sounded like a freaked out drag queen, from the way of her motormouth. It was like one little misunderstanding on her part would result in miles of unnecessary talk on the wrong subject before I could correct her. Then I figured out all the good job agencies must be staffed with female drag queens so I must be on a winner.

My interview at the job agency will be for 15 minutes. I wonder if it will be a trendy experience.

This sounds like Hell to me Peter.  The older I got, the fewer interviews I got.  When I was young and healthy, I was able to get positions of relative low to no labor, sitting down mostly, working with computers, secretarial, administrative assistant.  As I got older and my health began to naturally fall, the only positions I could get were based more on labor, and then hard and dangerous labor (as a 5’ tall female correctional officer locked in with 30 young male inmates most convicted of murderer.)  As a carpet installer where I was on my knees, carried large roles of carpet etc.  Which is, of course, why I can barely walk today because of spinal and hip injuries. 

Go figure…..........I’m NOT unique and yes, I have a college degree.

Good luck

Sounds like you’ve had it worse than me Huli. I don’t know how I would’ve coped with that.

A lot of people here cope or end up on the street Peter.  The situation in this Country didn’t just begin 10 years ago, it began its descent with the early 1990s recession http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession which also hit your Country as well.  Almost every firm in Washington D.C. laid off so many people that we were taken in groups of 30 and 40 at a time into a single office to fill out paperwork for unemployment insurance.  Typically, before then, each person was taken one at a time to a single desk to file.  It looked like a great and grand carnival ...

That was only the beginning.  Many never did get employment again.  Eventually I didn’t note that I had a college education; I couldn’t or else I would not have gotten jobs that would have viewed me as overqualified.

Yes I remember that recession and it did hit Australia. I can remember the 1980s as a time of greed, much like the time just before the more recent Global Financial Crisis.

In Australia we have a social security system that doesn’t stop paying people, as long as they keep meeting certain criteria. In my case I’ll keep getting paid unemployment benefits as long as I keep applying for jobs.

WoW Peter, your unemployment insurance system is awesome!  Here the cutoff is abrupt, 26 weeks.  And of course once your payments stop, so do you, as a number in the unemployed stats which is why our reported numbers are skewed. 

I’m afraid that a lot of citizens here would abuse your system or would be accused of abusing it.  This is part of the problem here.  People don’t want to have to be taxed for programs that are ‘assistance’ of any kind….but that swiftly changes when they suddenly need that help themselves.

hulitoons - 14 November 2012 07:57 PM

WoW Peter, your unemployment insurance system is awesome!  Here the cutoff is abrupt, 26 weeks.  And of course once your payments stop, so do you, as a number in the unemployed stats which is why our reported numbers are skewed. 

I’m afraid that a lot of citizens here would abuse your system or would be accused of abusing it.  This is part of the problem here.  People don’t want to have to be taxed for programs that are ‘assistance’ of any kind….but that swiftly changes when they suddenly need that help themselves.

It does seem good but there is still the stress of coping with Centrelink, the government Department I have to deal with. It’s like each office and even each staff member don’t seem to agree on what the rules are half the time. Plus when a person has to go to an office they can wind up wasting at least an hour or more just waiting for their turn. It’s really quite stressful having to deal with Centrelink.