The doal

I think I should be on the dole. I don’t seem to have done a day’s work in weeks.

However, my experience of the dole around a year ago was both short and painful. During a period of redundancy at the bar, I thought I would go get the dole form. Could do with a bit of free cash coming in now and then. My parents just don’t dig that shit anymore, which is a shame.

I don’t remember exactly how I came to acquire the volume that is the benefit form, but somewhere along the line, I must have arranged to have it delivered by a particularly burly courier. I don’t think I could have carried it all the way home by myself. It is one big-assed stapled chunk of bark.

Probably be ok, though, right? They wouldn’t make it too complicated, surely. Uneducated people need to trawl through this too. It can’t be all bad. No?

Intrusive isn’t the word. Invasive isn’t the word. Exhaustive? Nah. I think ‘fuckers’ is the word. In order to get, what, forty quid a week, I’d have to provide proof of all money I have ever made, spent, owed, forged, eaten, used as firewood, and left in the cash machine by mistake.

All previous employers, teachers and parent-governors needed personally inviting to dinner so that I could apologise to them for being so damn unemployable. Once they had signed the form with the blood of their first born, I would have to then start quizzing my housemates. Questions like, how much do you earn? How much have you earned, in total, in your entire life? How much do you hope to earn once you stop doing shitty jobs? If I were behind on the bills, would you actually give a shit?

Now for marriage status. That little lass you’re with now, are you marrying her? She does have lovely soft skin. Put a ring on her finger. And how much would that cost? Would forty quid a week cover it? Start saving.

I think it was about page one that I started to get my rage on. Usually happens. It was probably something as terrifyingly benign as ‘what is you national insurance number, punk?’ that floored me.

I DON'T KNOW!

Why does everyone want to know my fucking national insurance number like I have it tattooed on my arm? I’ve never felt particularly insured on a national scale and yet that national insurance seems to be the one number that remains constant throughout your lifetime. Like how many pubes you have - that never changes.

So I threw the form down in disgust and thought I’d go get a job instead. I couldn’t face the constant lying about how I was currently seeking work – the trick apparently is to be very resolute in your desire to be a part time tree surgeon on night shifts. They will have such a hard time finding you this imaginary position, and hey, a qualified tree surgeon shouldn’t have to do admin work for the National Health Service. It’s trees I’m into man, not people. Ha!

But I couldn’t do it. I can’t lie on such a monumental scale. I would rot from the inside out. Every day would be spent in abject fear of the system. I would keep expecting Tom Cruise in Minority Report to come crashing through my window and arrest this faking fraudster. “He doesn’t even like trees!”

Damn that film was flawed.

Anyway, forty quid a week! People who go on the dole just haven’t done the maths. That’s my week’s rent right there. Where am I gonna find money for mango juice and broadband?

It’s a full time occupation being unemployed what with all the form filling and meetings with government spies to prove that you are in fact seeking work. I didn’t want to have to spend any more of my time in offices, making sham phone calls while some not very chirpy woman stares on, unconvinced. Then there’s the fear of being exposed as a fraud, which would probably take up the rest of my time. Oh that, and an all-consuming self-loathing.

And that’s how it works. It made more sense to just get another job. It pays better and is less work. You know, it gets me out of the house. I can afford to pay my rent, and my council tax and my bills. There’s still that measly sum of about a gazillion dollar that I owe to the student loans company. But hey, everyone’s in the same boat, right? It’s normal being in debt in this age of credit and loans. Being employed, even if only a little bit employed, makes me feel a little less like Big Brother’s little cousin, Gary, is breathing down my weary neck going, “make one wrong move sucker...”