Shaun’s Guide to Being Jobless

Being jobless in some countries means wrapping yourself up in tin-foil, setting up camp in a piss-soaked alleyway and eating left over scraps from a KFC skip. Luckily, being jobless in the United Kingdom means never having to degrade yourself to that extent, or does it?

Here in Britain, we have a system known as Jobseeker’s Allowance, similar to America’s Welfare system. For years, my family had paid their taxes (some of which has gone to the Jobseeker’s Allowance system) and I myself, had been studying. After three years of studying I graduated with what I set out to obtain. Before I knew it though, I was broke, jobless and all my beer was gone.

Thus, I joined the unemployed masses at the Job Centre in order to collect the dribble of money open to me as an individual actively seeking work, and why not? I came from a tax-paying family, so getting myself into the system after a three-year stretch of education should have been a breeze. Or maybe not.

I had applied online and was then asked several questions over the phone which were highly irrelevant to my application. I then had to make my way to the closest Job Centre, this is twenty miles away, a short journey but ultimately, money for petrol which I didn’t have at the time.

There’s not much you need to learn as far as being on Jobseeker’s Allowance goes. The staff will talk to you in a patronising manner and your advisor will constantly be equipped with a facial expression that subtly reads “my taxes are going towards this?!“.

For some reason, people like to ‘chill out’ at the Job Centre, there’s people loitering in doorways, people loitering outside the building, people loitering inside the building and people just generally loitering wherever there’s a space to loiter. It’s quite off-putting and the entire location resembles emergency centres after a vicious tornado or rampant-giant-reptile attack. What are these people actually waiting for? Why would you loiter around such a depressing place? The mind boggles.

Being jobless seems to appeal to a lot of people, for me, having so much free time to do whatever I wanted was very tempting. Though ultimately, I slept a lot, eat a lot of shitty food and played video-games a lot. I was planning on writing something serious, designing something magnificent and finding perfect locations for photography, though for some reason, my motivation to do anything was pretty much lost. I never really liked getting up on the other side of the clock nor did I like feeling useless and I also felt partly guilty for having not found a job while living on handouts from the state.

Luckily, I survived on Jobseeker’s Allowance for only a meager six weeks before ditching it for a retail job. I only received one full payment and one half payment from them, this was due to an absence that they claimed was unexplained. Despite me showing them documents from British Telecom, a doctor’s note and several prescription labels, they claimed this was insufficient. The money that they gave to me covered my petrol costs, as I had to drive in for interviews, sign-ons and re-applications.

I’m currently settling into my very first job that isn’t anything freelance and I hope I never have to enter the Job Centre ever again. Though if I’m ever wanting my self-esteem crushed under a boot and my dignity put through a blender, I’ll know where to go.