Unemployment Snafu

Had a major panic day yesterday. I tried to file my weekly unemployment claim as usual on-line on Sunday and it didn’t go through. It said I didn’t have anymore internet claims available. So I tried over the phone and the message was that I didn’t have any more claims at all.

WHAT??? I just spoke with someone last week at the Unemployment Office and she said I have 13 weeks of unemployment left. That doesn’t include any extensions that President Obama is arranging.

Needless to say, I was panicked. I have been paying some bills every week as opposed to once a month since now I get unemployment every week. I have bills that are due this week and I wasn’t going to get a check???? What was I going to do????

Granted I do have a small (very small) IRA but I haven’t cashed that in yet and really didn’t want to cash it in so I could pay my normal bills.

After worrying about this all day yesterday and panicking at times, I didn’t sleep very well last night. I woke up at 5:45 and decided that lying in bed wasn’t doing me any good so I got up. I made coffee, got dressed, ate a bagel, read the paper and waited until 8:00.

At 8:00 I tried calling the Unemployment number. It was busy. So I kept trying. For twenty minutes. Get a busy signal, hit redial. Get a busy signal, hit redial. On and on and on. For twenty minutes.

Finally my call was answered by the automated recording. I hit the number to speak to a representative and I was on hold. For another 20 minutes. Oh, by the way, they have really bad hold music.

After 20 minutes, a nice guy (let’s call him Jeff) answered the phone. He asked me how he could help and I said that I tried to file my unemployment claim both on-line and on the phone and I was told I didn’t have any more claims but I know that I really do.

Jeff explained to me that their system went down over the weekend and they just discovered that this morning. They are working on fixing the problem but, in the mean time, they are filing claims for everyone over the phone by manually putting in the claims.

At this point I relaxed. Good. I would still get my money this week and all will be well. Except for poor Jeff and the people in his office. He told me that on a normal Tuesday after a holiday, they might have 20 people in their queue on hold. At the point I was talking to him, at 8:40 am, there were 90 people in the queue. 90!! Those are the people who were persistent and kept hitting redial over and over, like I did, and managed to get on hold. That doesn’t include all the people who gave up at the busy signals or hung up because they were on hold a long time. Those were 90 stubborn people such as myself.

What a mess! I felt really bad for Jeff. He was very cheerful about helping me and assured me that my money would be in my account by Thursday. I thanked him and thanked him again and said I was so relieved. I just wonder how long his cheerful mood lasted. I wonder how many people yelled at him or were upset and crying when talking to him. I hope he made it through the day alright and that he doesn’t hate his job because of the rotten day he had.

I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to not pay someone to monitor the computer system at the Unemployment Office over the weekends. Considering how much stress it caused and how many lives this snafu impacted, I think someone (our “esteemed” governor) needs to pay to have a weekend IT person watch over the system. It will be money well spent.