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I had an unemployment insurance "orientation" meeting this morning at 9:30. (It turns out they do morning and afternoon sessions; I'm glad to have been randomly assigned to one in the morning.) That was down on 125th Street, a nice easy trip from here. When we first moved to Inwood, just about all the state and city government stuff we needed to deal with was near City Hall; I'm glad they've now got many offices in Harlem.
The Department of Labor had mailed us all forms to fill out, along with the "you must attend this meeting" notices. Those people who hadn't filled them out were given new ones, and filled them out there. We also got a brief pink form, which included how long you'd been unemployed, whether you were collecting unemployment insurance (it's an all-purpose job-seeker form, apparently), and some demographic stuff. The questions about race/ethnicity and disability were marked as optional. The one about gender wasn't, but I was pleased to see that there were three boxes, labeled as "male," "female," and "null." I'd rather have seen "other", and suspect they got "null" from their database programmer.
To keep, we got a sheet of useful information, a form to record our job contacts on (there's also one in the booklet we were mailed), and a card that we're supposed to mail back when we do find work. Then there was a Powerpoint presentation, of the most tedious kind: one of the women running the meeting read almost every word off the screen (mercifully, not the contents of the Web site screenshots). I can go back in a week or so and get a swipe card allowing me to use their "resource room"--this contains computers, copiers, and fax machines that can be used for job-hunting purposes, a few job postings, and some potentially useful information like hints on how to write a cover letter.
The whole thing would have been entirely unremarkable if not for the somewhat disturbed woman sitting near me, who showed up slightly late, kept interrupting with questions, and eventually started shouting at me, before another of the attendees calmed her down with a hug and talk about Jesus. (I have no idea why she picked me, possibly just because I was near her.)
That all took about an hour. I was pleased that, unlike jury duty, when they said 9:30 they meant it, so those of us who are almost compulsively on time weren't penalized by having to sit around for half an hour while the latecomers straggled in.
Next stop was a copy shop, for copies of our income tax forms. That meant buses down to near Columbia--had I been feeling entirely well, I'd probably have walked it, but I still have that stupid cough. I made the copies, and discovered that our W-2s weren't in the envelope. That just meant everything got mailed, in the end, from right here at home, not from a mailbox on the Upper West Side. I stopped off and bought some nice chocolate, and a few groceries, then had an early lunch of Cantonese wonton soup.
And now I will catch my breath, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
julian_tiger will bounce at me.
The Department of Labor had mailed us all forms to fill out, along with the "you must attend this meeting" notices. Those people who hadn't filled them out were given new ones, and filled them out there. We also got a brief pink form, which included how long you'd been unemployed, whether you were collecting unemployment insurance (it's an all-purpose job-seeker form, apparently), and some demographic stuff. The questions about race/ethnicity and disability were marked as optional. The one about gender wasn't, but I was pleased to see that there were three boxes, labeled as "male," "female," and "null." I'd rather have seen "other", and suspect they got "null" from their database programmer.
To keep, we got a sheet of useful information, a form to record our job contacts on (there's also one in the booklet we were mailed), and a card that we're supposed to mail back when we do find work. Then there was a Powerpoint presentation, of the most tedious kind: one of the women running the meeting read almost every word off the screen (mercifully, not the contents of the Web site screenshots). I can go back in a week or so and get a swipe card allowing me to use their "resource room"--this contains computers, copiers, and fax machines that can be used for job-hunting purposes, a few job postings, and some potentially useful information like hints on how to write a cover letter.
The whole thing would have been entirely unremarkable if not for the somewhat disturbed woman sitting near me, who showed up slightly late, kept interrupting with questions, and eventually started shouting at me, before another of the attendees calmed her down with a hug and talk about Jesus. (I have no idea why she picked me, possibly just because I was near her.)
That all took about an hour. I was pleased that, unlike jury duty, when they said 9:30 they meant it, so those of us who are almost compulsively on time weren't penalized by having to sit around for half an hour while the latecomers straggled in.
Next stop was a copy shop, for copies of our income tax forms. That meant buses down to near Columbia--had I been feeling entirely well, I'd probably have walked it, but I still have that stupid cough. I made the copies, and discovered that our W-2s weren't in the envelope. That just meant everything got mailed, in the end, from right here at home, not from a mailbox on the Upper West Side. I stopped off and bought some nice chocolate, and a few groceries, then had an early lunch of Cantonese wonton soup.
And now I will catch my breath, and
julian_tiger will bounce at me.