Rant #2,474: Wishin' and Hopin"

That is really a very mild title I put up there.

With what I went through and learned yesterday, if I could put up every expletive I know, that would probably be a more suitable title than the mild one I have placed on this entry today.

Let me backtrack. As of Thursday--Thanksgiving Day, of course--I will have been out of work for seven weeks.

That fact is bad enough. It rips at me, but I am at least content that I have done everything I could to attain another position. Things simply have not worked out for me.

But in those seven weeks, I have not yet received my unemployment insurance payments. I applied right after I lost my job, and actually had to apply three times before it took. One time I applied "after hours," so I found out that this New York State Unemployment website is perhaps the only electronic site in the world that has a time scheme in which to use it. It also rejected me another time for reasons I simply do not remember.

But the third time was the charm, I was able to apply for benefits, and my case was moving along, which should have eventually enabled me to gain benefits as I search for work.

Well, at least I thought that, because yesterday, if I did not know what the word "incompetence" meant beforehand, I certainly know what the word means now.

I have been dutifully applying for unemployment each week that I have been out of work, filling out the weekly form as I waited for unemployment to kick in.

The first bruise that I incurred in the process was that since I received severance--and since for whatever reason, the state considered it to be salary, thus upping my salary even with the pittance I received from my former employer--simply getting severance held me back for a few weeks in getting unemployment payments. I spoke with a few former co-workers, and we all experienced the same thing, so I was in the same leaky boat as others.

That in itself was not right, was not fair, but go fight city hall, go fight my former employer, go beat your head against the wall.

I moved on, continually week after week letting the state government know that I had not found a new job and was still out of work.

Everything proceeded nicely until this week. I tried to report myself unemployed again, but the window allowing me to do this did not appear. I tried at different times during the day to do this, it would not come up, and I figured that perhaps since Monday begins the business week, that I would try again on Monday.

I did do just that, at various times, but I could not get the window on my screen that allows me to do this. I have provided two screen shots for you. The first shows the window that comes up when you sign into your account--and from which you click onto the part that says "Unemployment Services" to gain access to the nest window, which is essentially a sign-in sheet asking you questions about the past week's job search.

The second image I have put up is what I get when I click on that button--not what I am supposed to get, but a message that has nothing to do with what I am trying to do.

I did this countless times yesterday, and the same thing came up. I also actually called unemployment to put in for the week, but after I punched in my specifics on the phone, the message was this: "You cannot apply for unemployment until tomorrow."

After constant tries, I gave up, and decided I needed to take more direct action.

Through trial and error, I found a direct number to speak to a live person at unemployment, and stayed on the line for about 20 minutes to speak to someone. I had to take my son to work, so my waiting spilled into my car, where I have my phone hooked up to my car, so I paitently waited until someone picked up my call.

As I was driving my son to work, someone picked up, I explained the situation, and he suggested I contact the unemployment technical department, or something akin to that, and I refused. The person I spoke to said he never heard of such a problem, and he said that he would have to transfer my call over to a supervisor, who was currently on the phone. After a few minutes, the supervisor actually transferred me over to someone else, and I had to go through this long story again.

The person I spoke to evidently is a technician in that department, and he was very nice to me. He said that he would look into the situation, and call me back in an hour after he had assessed what was going on. He actually gave me his personal cell phone number, and said that he would get to the bottom of whatever the problem was.

I had an errand to run, which is a story in itself that I will leave for another day. The errand took much longer than I expected it to take, and when I finally got home, I had received a call from the technician. I called him back, and yes, he sure got to the bottom of it all--not only the bottom, but literally, the rock bottom of the well.

Read on ...

I have been out of work for extended periods three times in my life: right now, which was preceded by my first time out of work in the late 1980s, when I lost my real estate writing job due to that market falling out on the East Coast, and I was out for a grand total of 18 months, and the second period, which lasted about four months in the mid-1990s, when I lost my job with a security association when my position became a political football between the board members of that organization. The first period of unemployment greatly impacted my impending divorce, and the second came right after my son was born, so when I lose my jobs through no fault of my own, I really pick 'em, don't I?

During the second time that I was out of work in 1995 into early 1996, to supplement my income, I was delivering newspapers overnight as an adult deliverer, a job that I had taken when I was working at the security association, because my pay was so low there that I had to have something to add to it to help make ends meet. I made a grand total of $150 a week doing this, and no, I did not get weekly tips, either--that was straight pay.

So when I lost my regular job, I applied for unemployment, and I kept the newspaper delivery job too, and reported that to unemployment. Remember, in those days there was no Internet, so everything had to be done in person at the local unemployment office, so that is what I did.

I was getting unemployment checks on a regular basis--back then, they paid at the top rate of $360 a week--and I did what I had to do to secure a job while I still performed the newspaper delivery job.

Well, once day I got a notice from unemployment that they "found out" that I was doing the newspaper delivery job, and since the grand total of $150 a week exceeded the amount of money that I could make while getting unemployment, I would have to give up the newspaper delivery job or forfeit my unemployment.

I could fight this charge, and that is exactly what I did. I lost the case during a hearing, and they were going to take away my unemployment, but if I remember correctly, I got one regular job right as this was occurring--which paid me the grand total of $7 an hour--and then right after, I obtained another job, which paid me a pittance but still better than $7 an hour. That is the job that I ended up staying with for the next 23 and a half years, the one that I lost nearly seven weeks ago.

So yes, I lost my hearing, but I ended up winning the war, so to speak--or at least I thought I won the war, until yesterday.

As I said, I lost my hearing, and that really should have been the end of it. Unemployment paid me whatever they owed me, I alerted them when I found work, and the tie to them in any way, shape or form should have been cut right then and there.

However, the technician who is currently on my case told me that due to that case, a case that occured nearly a quarter century ago, it is currently impeding me in getting unemployment today. He said he did not know why, but I can surmise the following: when federal and local governments went all Internet, someone uploaded my case, did not add in that the case was over and done with, and that my case has been open on their computers all of these years.

Yes, a case that began in late 1995 and ended in early 1996 was never closed out electronically by the New York State Department of Labor, and thus, without it being closed out, it is literally blocking me from getting unemployment in 2019--more than two decades after the fact.

The technician said he did not know why this was happening, he would try to fix it, and that I should give it until Friday--the last day that I can file for this past week's unemployment--to see if it is fixed.

Well, if it is not fixed on Friday, then I will be fixed, because I will not be getting unemployment until everything is in order in my account.

The technician said he would do what he could--he even took my survey answers verbally over the phone, presumably so he could add them in when the problem was fixed--and he said if the problem was not fixed by Friday, I should contact him directly.

I have several questions, as I am sure that you have after reading about this fiasco: why was this case--a pre-Internet case--added into the database to begin with. and why was the outcome not included, thus put a final end to this situation? How could such a thing happen? How could this case be an "open" one even though Unemployment itself won the case? Etc., etc., etc.

And then the final question: what happens if this problem is not fixed by Friday--what do I do then?

As you can imagine, many thoughts have gone through my head since I found out about this glitch in their system. I could contact my local legislator, I can contact Governor Cuomo's office, I could contact every media outlet in the region and get coverage on this to make the New York State Department of Labor look as culpable in this situation as possible.

Heck, I could contact President Trump and see what he could do about this.

Finally, I could get an unemployment lawyer and sue the department for not just what is owed me in unemployment, but for a lot more than that due to the pain and suffering this has caused me, knowingly and unknowingly, because I do believe such a situation has and can impact my credit rating and other things in my life and the life of my family.

So while such "sugarplums" are dancing through my head, I am just going to have to grin and bear it right now. The technician told me to intermittently check to see if the problem has been taken care of--it could take more than one day to fix--and I have done that, with the images I have posted having been taken this very morning before I started writing this entry. I also checked a few times yesterday afternoon, and will continue to check through today, tomorrow, into the holiday and of course, on Friday.

If I do not get satisfaction on Friday morning, I think the first thing I am going to do is to contact my local legislator, who has an office right next to my favorite record store right near my house.

Then, all bets are off. I will do, legally, what I have to do to get this thing the right way.

So as I move into the seventh week of joblessness, I still do not have a job, as I am no closer to finding one than I was when this whole thing started. I have absolutely no money coming into my coffers, with no end in sight because of this electronic glitch.

I have lost any hope I have for an end to this torture, and I am at my wit's end at this point in time.

A lesser person would have broken down already.

What, me worry?