The recession, benefits, the safety net, and the learning curve

mardatha

.. Just go, switch off mentally, look normal, and then go home. You can do this !!

mvengemvenge

mardatha wrote: »

.. Just go, switch off mentally, look normal, and then go home. You can do this !!

Well, that's what the staff do

fc123

Oh Max.....I sympathise but needs as must and all that.


We are up to something Corp at the moment. Snag is that one needs a security pass to move freely on the premises.
To get the pass, one has to attend an induction.....which is all fine...but we have to attend the one with all the late teens wanting 4 hr contract sales work to tide them over.

OH did his. OMG. He fell asleep during the H + S film and bloke leading talk thought he'd catch him out. Fortunately, he knew the answers as we have had to inform ourselves over the years.

Then there was 'Role Play' That was fun. He failed the serving test as he forgot to introduce a credit card to customer....and nearly went into a 'But they are a rip off...that is not good customer advice''....but didn't and took the telling off in good grace..still not revealing that he wasn't sales floor staff.


He didn't want to say..but I am only here to obtain the pass....he's too polite so just decided to blend in with the 20 odd youngsters...difficult.

...and security lecturer soon sussed out he wasn't trainee staff as he answered incorrectly the question on 'How would you deal with a shoplifter?''. He answered from experience.


Worse thing is to 'protest' in these situations..just go with the flow and nod nicely at the wise words.
Being Self employed 23 years, we are out of practice in these situations..usually it's us training staff in our own methods.

My turn next week sometime....except I now know all the proper answers to the corp questions...just in case.

Good luck Max

SingleSue

Max_Headroom wrote: »

Well just to add insult to financial injury, at my fortnightly ritual humiliation and patronisation session at the job centre today I was advised that I must attend a "Back to Work" session tomorrow for an hour.

I've every confidence that this will be some jumped up civil servant with no job worries beyond how big his/her index linked pension will be telling me what I already know. Great.

I do wonder whether the long term unemployed career benefitists get dragged in for these, or whether it's just a gentle kicking for those of us already doing all we can. Bet I can guess though.

Max is not happy about this, not happy at all... :mad:

I have work focused interviews every 6 months...where I ask for help and they tell me I am exempt as I am officially a carer! I finally had an advisor at my last one who actually gave me some help...although she did say I shouldn't be working and she was only referring me onto the correct departments on my insistence!

1echidna

Me, I am too mad for them to bother!

harryhound

SingleSue wrote: »

she did say I shouldn't be working and she was only referring me onto the correct departments on my insistence!

Get the girls back in the kitchen, preferably bare foot and pregnant; that will make some jobs for our boys.

Didn't we try that after WW2 ?

I can also remember some sort of official B.S. during the Reagan era about how all the work would be done by robots and we would have to agree to retire at 55 to avoid mass work sharing. I got quite stroppy during that presentation. **

Now the official policy is "work til you drop 'cos we cannot afford the bus passes?"

The route out of this mess is to keep the whole country "economically active". The Asian way rather than the African one.

Harry.

** Mind you the international economist giving the presentation did get the effect of the coming "Thatcher - Reagan" recession pretty spot on. A bit like someone saying house prices will go down in Summer 2007.

JayScottGreenspan

Max_Headroom wrote: »

Well just to add insult to financial injury, at my fortnightly ritual humiliation and patronisation session at the job centre today I was advised that I must attend a "Back to Work" session tomorrow for an hour.

I've every confidence that this will be some jumped up civil servant with no job worries beyond how big his/her index linked pension will be telling me what I already know. Great.

I do wonder whether the long term unemployed career benefitists get dragged in for these, or whether it's just a gentle kicking for those of us already doing all we can. Bet I can guess though.

Max is not happy about this, not happy at all... :mad:

Okey cokey, pig in a pokey…

Max_Headroom_3

Ye gods... :wall:

LydiaJ

Well, it seems you managed not to kill anyone, if you are on here posting and not locked up in police custody somewhere, so congratulations from me. Inane "training" is bad enough when it's part of your job, but when it's part of not having a job... words fail me.

Max_Headroom_3

Thanks LJ. I guess the problem with situations like this is that it will always be geared to the lowest common denominator, and in the case of the general public, that's pretty blimmin low.

My "homework" should i make it to the next assessment thing (in six weeks I think, I forget now, was losing the will to live) is to fill in my A4 sheet of paper with my "Three Step Plan".

Headings to be completed are:

Step 1: Jobs that I can do

Step 2: Contacts
e.g. People i know who can help me

Step 3: Use different approaches
e.g. Making contact with employers

Followed by

Things I will do in the next month to help me get a job

1.

2.

3.


I don't want to be snobby about it, and maybe there are people out there who really do need to be taken by the hand and lead through these procedures, but for me it is utter patronising garbage. I was doing this stuff the minute my redundancy was announced and a whole month before I even finished work or signed on. Nothing I write on this bit of paper will make the slightest iota of difference, I'm not going to start some new strategy because writing it down will make me think of it. If there were anything else I could do I'd already be doing it.

I'm afraid that it feels very much like I'm in detention at school with the "thick set" for not performing adequately.

Painful. :wall: