Let's Start Throwing Things

I am currently unemployed. Have been for six months now, since I was kinda sacked from my previous job. I haven't actually been told that I was sacked, but I took the "give me your keys back" as enough proof and I haven't been back since.

To be honest, I was sick of the job, sick of the three hour round trip, sick of the stupidity of the customers and the management and sick of the boring repetitive nature of the work. So in many ways it was a relief. Okay so being unemployed doesn't pay as well, and is just as boring in many ways, but at least I get the joy of going to the jobcentre.

Which is where my problems really began.

They have no real clue what it is I do. Which is fair enough, as I can't actually work out what exactly they're supposed to do either. Although I did hear one of the staff complaining about being the purchaser of stationery and then discovering that she wasn't supposed to order blue pens.

Despite me working in IT for many years, I don't actually have any qualifications in IT - apart from an IT O Level I took in 1986. So I hoped - foolishly in retrospect - that I would be able to get some kind of qualification via the Jobcentre. Oh dearie me no. There's posters telling you to retrain. There's posters telling you to get qualifications. But there's no actual courses or budget for anyone who wants to do a specific course.

CCNA? No. MCSE? No. ECDL? No. ITiL? No. Learning how to use a mouse? You betcha!

I even went on a course to see if I could set up my own business - possibly training people who didn't know how to use a computer (like some of the staff in the Jobcentre, none of whom seemed to know what the PG UP or PG DOWN buttons do) - and went to a training place in Clapham.

First day there was probably 26 - 30 people. Second day, half that. Third day, maybe ten of us. And we learned nothing. I learned more about setting up a business in my Commerce O Level and Economics AO & A Levels than I was ever going to do at that place. And that irritated me. They're getting paid by the Government (read taxpayers) to provide training and yet they provide nothing of the sort.

Yet actual courses that could enable people to get back into work and paying higher rate tax (you'd hope to be getting £40k plus with a nice selection of Cisco courses and maybe some Microsoft certified stuff) are not available. There's not even funding for teacher training courses, or for anyone wanting to teach adults basic skills that they might be lacking - which again would hopefully lead to more tax receipts.

What is exactly the point of the Jobcentre? They can't train you in anything worthwhile, they told me that I would be better off looking on industry specific websites as they "don't get many job adverts for IT positions" so they're not really helping me get back into work, and they won't pay for me to be CRB checked.

I kinda despair at the pointlessness of having to go to see them every single week. But I do have to go, or they stop giving me the princely sum of £65 a week.

I wonder sometimes if the whole demotivational process is designed to weed out people who are actually working on the side and persuade them that they'd be better off not going in. Or possibly it's to drag down motivated people so that they become entirely reliant on the state. Who can tell.

All I know is, I think I'm going to go postal in there soon, and given the amount of IT equipment lying around, I think I could do quite a lot of damage. That's the benefit of having worked in IT, you know what's going to hurt the most when you throw it at someone.