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I was summoned to call the jobcentre today - I don't have to go to the meetings as long as I have the wage subsidy job - and the woman on the other end of the phone didn't know me, hadn't read my file and knew nothing about dyscalculia.
Why do they ask me questions when obviously, they don't understand what I'm talking about and don't seem to have any interest in helping people?
Luckily I'm not the kind of person who breaks down (although I sometimes feel like it), so instead I got angry and decided to win this fight one way or the other.

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1/18/10
Dear Mohinga,
I hear ya'! Anytime that a person looses a job and is applying for unemployment insurance here in the US, the question is asked, "What was the 'event' that caused you to be fired?" The problem with this question is that it 'assumes' that there was an 'event'. If all jobs were still the same as they were 20 years ago, then, yes, there would probably be an 'event' that caused a person to loose their job,... for example, being late to work,... or yelling at a customer,... or doing some piece of work incorrectly. These would be 'events'. But nowadays, jobs such as 'call centers', which use computers, hold all of your 'job performance' on the computer. And the employee is seldom able to 'see' those records. So, it works like this. 'Warnings' of not reaching 'goals' are given, but as long as the company 'needs' that employee, no 'action' is necessarily taken. The company may even hire several new people, train them, and watch to see how they 'perform'. Then, at the company's convenience, when they have someone who does 'better' than the 'warned employee', they can make the decision to fire the first employee. Any 'events' have been stored on a computer, sometimes for days, weeks, or months. So, all the 'fired employee' knows is that he/she was fired for 'performance'. Then, here's this big, all-important, question, "What was the 'event' that caused you to be fired?" When it's being 'barked' repeatedly at the person who's lost the job, and the 'barker' isn't listening to the circumstances,... that there was no 'event' other than the little day-to-day statistics that are stored on the computer, which only 'management' can see,... then this is a very stressful situation. This seems to be the same around the globe? - jus'

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Because that's what they get paid to do. More to the point, that's ALL they get paid to do.

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I know it's their job and I know they get kicked from the top and pass on the kicks to us, but somewhere in the kicking session, they were robbed of their empathy..