hypatia said:
My Husband went to the unemployment office today. He picked up his number, 956 and stood in a room with several hundred people, They had chairs for about 30 people. By 4:00 PM they saw him{he got their at 8 AM}. Yea! he gets unemployment. Now all he has to do is post a resume on the Michigan works site, then go to another office, meet with some one who will issue a pin number, take this pin to the credit union and arrange direct deposit, then next Monday between 8 am and 12 Noon, he has to call the automated phone something, answer some questions by pressing 1 or 9, and then the check will be deposited by Friday.
So tonight at dinner he looks all worried and says, "Why would they give any man so many ways to screw this up"? I answer, "Because they can".
Apparently, here in Oregon, you don't even go into the unemployment office anymore, everything is done online or over the phone.
The last time I had to apply for unemployment I had some red-tape to wade through. Because of the nature of my employer, I was told that I would be sent a special form to fill out to determine whether or not I was eligible to receive it. The form had to be sent a special office that handled all these claims for the State (I don't know why they made it so hard, when it all could have been handled by my local Office contacting my employer and asking if I met the criteria.)
Anyway, I was told to send it in as soon as possible as the office handled a lot of claims and they were processed on a first-come first-served basis. I was also told that it could be up to 3 months before I got my first check. In the meantime I would still have to report to the employment office every week etc, just like I was getting unemployment.
The first week goes by, I do everything I needed to, and instead of getting a check I got a letter telling me I needed to send in the form. (which I had not received yet.)
This went on for 4 weeks. I didn't have any way to contact this special office, so I called my local office, and told them that I couldn't send in the form because I hadn't been sent one yet. The person I talked to said they send me one. I got it, filled it in, and sent it off. Sure enough, a few days later, I get my form from the special office, only this one has a lot of numbers and stuff already filled in at the top.
Luckily, the form also had the phone number for the office. I called them and told them that I had already sent one form in already, so did I have to send this one in also. She asked my name, and looked it up on the computer. She said that they had received it a couple of days ago and that I would should get my check the next week. (I'm not sure whether it had been already processed, or if she just processed it while she had it up on the computer)
So after 6 weeks, I finally got my first unemployment check (back paid to when I should have been getting checks.)
A little over a week later, I got hired at a new job.
I'm sorry about everyones bad news!
