“I’m Naming And Shaming, For What It’s Worth”

One man’s JobCentre experience. Spotted here. I’m sharing because I think it should go viral.

Stuart Paterson
I can now fully understand why people who have any sort of attempted rational dealings with the DWP are driven to despair, desperation & ultimate despond. The Department of Work & Pensions, Job Centre +, whichever section therein you wish to name who deal with unemployment, have already proven themselves to be insensitive, thoughtless & jobsworthy in my interactions with them over the past 4 months. Now, I can easily add the word ‘thick’. Or ‘stupid’. Or just ‘dense’. Since most of the folk I’ve seen working at Dumfries JC are comfortably over the age of 40, I can only assume they’ve been in the job since before literacy, numeracy & IT skills were requisites of passing their job interviews. So why this sudden outpouring of frustration & contempt on a social networking site on a storm-lashed Wednesday?, I hear you saying to your PC monitor. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. And I’m not. So I’m naming & shaming, for what it’s worth.

Yesterday, I’d an appointment at Dumfries JC+ (Stalag 13) at 11.40am with my ‘advisor’, the woman who’s job is allegedly to ‘help me into employment’, the woman who had previously sanctioned me 4 weeks’ worth of Jobseekers Allowance for incorrectly filling out a form, Maureen Ferguson. In I toddled like a good little pleb at 11.35am. 11.40 came & went. As did 11.45, 11.50 & 11.55. No call for me, & all the while I could see the bold Maureen sitting at her desk, attending to other clients. At midday I approached a security guard & appraised him of the situation. He went over to speak to Maureen who looked surprised to see me, then beckoned me over to her inner sanctum of control. She then informed me, with all the emotional depth of a lump of wet turf, that my claim had been stopped due to my now claiming Incapacity Benefit & my interview had been cancelled. Along with my JSA.

I wouldn’t say I was particularly surprised. You get thick, dense, uncaring folk in all walks of work & life. When she disappeared for 10 minutes to sort it out, then returned saying ‘Oh, it was a mistake’, & carrying the file of the person I’d been mistaken for, I was surprised to note that they had a different forename, a different postcode & even the spelling of Paterson was different (English spelling, two Ts). I pointed this out to the bold Maureen, who seemed about as bothered by it all as if she’d just spilled her tea or lost the TV remote. I then asked who was to blame. She said she’d no idea. I asked if I’d be getting paid as usual on Friday. She said ‘Oh, probably’. I asked for assurances on this. I asked for assurances that Housing would be contacted, since, obviously, they’d been told I was no longer claiming JSA & would therefore have stopped my Housing Benefit. I asked to be contacted by phone by today. To all of this, Maureen said she’d be contacting DWP at Greenock THAT VERY AFTERNOON to let them know of the error. She’d contact Housing. She’d ring me by today. I signed for my JSA & left, wondering just what the hell was going to happen.

Well, come 2pm today, & no phone calls, emails or anything remotely resembling contact, from Maureen or anyone else. A phone call to a DWP contact centre in England, then a call to Dumfries JC+ on a number passed onto me from Torquay (yep, Torquay) resulted in me finding out some interesting things. My claim was closed by Maureen. There were no notes on the system saying anything other than, in the past day, Maureen had got someone else to inform Housing that my claim was closed in error. Nothing about contacting DWP in Greenock or my claim continuing or me being paid on time. Then, finally, at 4.15, a return call from a manager in Dumfries apologising profusely & telling me he’d sorted it all out & had had to ‘clear up someone else’s mess’ (guess who’s mess?). Then a call from Greenock assuring me I’d be paid on Friday. And still nobody able to tell me if I’ll receive my rent money on Friday.

I asked the manager who rang about complaining & was told I could write a letter, ‘for the attention of managers’ at Dumfries – but not him! He couldn’t tell me WHICH manager to contact. Will I write the letter? You’d better believe it. Will I be mentioning all of the above, & what I’ve learned regarding Maureen’s error? Absolutely. Will it make a blind bit of difference to how they treat ‘clients’ like me? I’m 100% certain it won’t, but I’ll not be missing them & hitting the wall. Just imagine, if I’d not made calls today, off my own back, I’d be in deep shit & sinking fast. I can easily see how others who maybe don’t feel confident enough to act like that would just get shafted, shat on & left to flounder. As for Maureen Ferguson, if, by some remote chance she were to read this, then let her  sue me. They don’t like it when they’re shown up for the incompetent shower of jobsworths that many of them are, but they’ll try to come down on you like a ton of bricks if you don’t fill out a form correctly. Tough. Time to get typing that letter, & try not to resort to swearing or namecalling. It’ll be hard but I’ll manage it, & I’ll be determined it won’t just disappear into some mandarin’s in-tray & never be addressed.