Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   it's just a clerical error to you but
Friday, January 11 2002
It hadn't been a bad day, but then I opened my mail and here's this letter from the New York State Department of Labor telling me in their standard boilerplate that my application for unemployment has been rejected because I hadn't worked enough during the "base period": October 2000 through September 2001. They had me down as having earned $9,230 dollars during the third quarter of 2001 and no money in any of the other quarters. But this is completely wrong: I worked during all those quarters and I made more than $9,230 in each one of them. Someone fucked up, a simple clerical error, a little inattention whilst fantasizing about Justin Timberlake, one coffee short of a clear mind on some hump day morning, who knows? The point is that some temp worker who's already working somewhere else1 fucked up, and I am the one to suffer. By suffer, I mean I have to climb this tree of bureaucracy to free this kite I didn't crash and then kneel down in the mud and straighten out this string I didn't tangle and it's all so terribly unfair! Not only that, but because of this situation, the automatic telephone system that allows me to claim benefits for a week has a lock on my account, forbidding me from claiming. So how do I get money for this week once this mess is finally straightened out? It's not like there are any forms to download from the official Department of Labor website.
I know none of this stuff is really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's always frustrating to be a victim of clerical incompetence, especially concerning matters of financial stability.
But it was "date night" and I couldn't do anything more about the situation, so Gretchen and I went out: Hunan Delight, air hockey, and then finally drinks at Mooney's. Alcohol plus bar minus edge of seat conversation equals desire to smoke, so Gretchen bummed a cigarette from a scrawny girl dressed in a baggy skirt, combat boots and a Cisco jacket; her boyfriend sported an Amish beard and looked as if he'd already seen Fellowship of the Rings sixteen times. I was still kind of upset about the unemployment situation, so after one round of drinks I wanted to go home.
[REDACTED]

1 Someone was telling me a story about a friend who had a temp job and wondered why his co-workers were doing their data entry so much faster than he was. Then he found out that they'd all been spending the day entering complete jibberish while he'd been taking the time to enter real data. When you have a temp job, there's no incentive to do your job right. Every day is your last day!

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020111

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