I work in a small office building which is ran by our local benefits centre which is pretty much just a recruitment agency that only deals with people who have been unemployed for over six months. This means everyday I meet people who have been unemployed for either 6 months or the more extreme 20 years (There is one like that). Some of these people are the nicest people you could meet, others are worse than sour milk.

Working in here has gave me a huge perspective on the unemployed in my area, like there is no real specific age, race or gender grouping. I’ll admit there are a large amount of White Men aged between 30 – 50 but I would say more woman in that group may be stay at home mums and not claim Job Seekers.

Some of these people come in and talk away to you and are very polite, others are horrible to you or don’t bother speaking at all. I will admit I have a large preference to the ones that talk to me and make conversation and I tend to remember there names. But I do assume most people are like that.

I’d say I’d know maybe fifty – one hundred of our clients names and out of that at least twenty are for all the wrong reasons. There are some little older ladies who will talk away about what they do in there spare time; one goes out to dances with her friends but complains that they’re all paired off now so its just her that’s having all the fun, there’s some closer to my age who talk about going out on the weekends and getting drunk and there’s some in-betweens who would talk for hours about there pets or the weather.

I have a few clients that I know will always speak when there in, so I make more of an effort with them as they like being spoken to, but there’s others I don’t even make eye contact with. I have a few reasons for this, as some are horrible people, that would scream at you for looking at them the wrong way. I’ve actually had someone who went insane as we couldn’t refund them for a bus ticket he hadn’t even bought yet. That day he even decided he was going to make a complaint against us to the department for employment and Learning and then make a complaint against them as it was there fault overall.

We also have this group of people who don’t want to work, don’t want to come in and don’t want to do anything. I call this group the hopeless group. There is one person in this group who another client has actually commented on saying he needs to be slightly more positive. Everyone in my office knows who this man is and knows not to expect him at any workshops or classes as he just doesn’t care enough to turn up.

I was talking to another client who said – “I don’t see why some people come in here just to be moody and destructive whenever all they have to do is look for suitable jobs for two hours then go home. Some people here must not want to find any work and just sit on benefits.”

After he said this, it really made me think about how many of the people that come in to us have no intentions of finding a job and expect us to do it for them. We can only help those who are willing to work with us and try themselves as well.

Sorry if this is really ramble-y. I was just super annoyed with our clients today and how little some of them care about getting off benefits. Although we do get the odd person who tries really hard and actually finds work, so its not all doom and gloom. 

Until next time!

Bronagh c: