A Bad Case of the Mondays.

Yes, even us lowly unemployed folk can be on the receiving end of a brutal ass-kicking from a Monday with a bad sense of humor. Case in point: This past Monday kicked my ass all day long.

It started when I woke up after a horrible night of fitful sleep, all nervous for an interview for a job with a starting pay at a rate that I haven't been that unfortunate to make since 2005. You know you're desperate for a job when even an interview for a $10/hour position as the "company bitch" can make your stomach do somersaults. And as you're getting up and out of bed and trying to psych yourself up for your interview and your day, you discover that Aunt Flo has decided that TODAY is the day that she's going to bestow her monthly gift upon you. Which normally wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that she didn't show up last month -- WTF, birth control pill, WTF? -- (and no, as I told my mother, unless the second Immaculate Conception is at work within me, there is NO chance I'm pregnant, so move along), so you just KNOW that this go-round is going to be twice as brutal. And it all starts on a day that I'm trying to be happy about a job interview for too much work and not enough pay.

While I'm on the unpleasant topic of Aunt Flo, I'd like to open an unofficial poll. And apologies in advance for being gross, but I just gotta know... girls, would you rather have 7-9 days of "Holy hell, maybe I should just build a damn ark already" with minimal cramping/moodiness, or 5-6 days of "Here a spot, there a spot, everywhere a spot spot" complete with cramps that legitimately make you fear laboring for childbirth someday and mood swings that make you choke up at the sight of the animated bears romping in the woods with toilet paper chunks on their tails in the Charmin commercials? Because I've had it all lately, and I honestly can't decide which option makes me want to jump off a bridge first. All I can say is that NOW I remember why I took Lupron for seven years, and damned if I don't miss it.

Anyway, I made it through the job interview, and it wasn't bad. I left the office still believing that it was too much work for not enough money, but hey, I haven't worked in nine months. If they happen to offer me a job, I'm probably taking it.

On the way home, I'm making mental notes of all the bills I have to pay with my unemployment check that's due to arrive in Monday's mail: cell phone, auto insurance, car payment (that one is 2 weeks late and Chase is now calling me 6 and 7 times a day. Sometimes I feel like answering the phone on the seventh call and saying, "You know, bastards, I don't have any more money than I did the LAST six times you called me today." Never mind that my car is STILL NOT RUNNING, so of COURSE I just LOVE parting with almost half of an unemployment check for a car I can't even drive). But you know, these are necessities... need a cell phone for potential employers to reach me, auto insurance and car payment -- because someday, Jed will ride again... I just need money, period.

And wouldn't you know that in Monday's mail, I didn't receive a check. Instead, I got a "We need to talk to you and have scheduled a phone interview on March 16 (our FIRST available appointment, so don't ask for anything sooner). Oh, and we'll be holding your funds until after our determination has been made, suckaaaaa!"

Well, fuck me. So much for paying for my cell phone, my car, and, oh, I don't know, FOOD.

So I call my wonderful friends at the EDD, not to try to move up the immovable interview, but just to ask what their reason is for holding my money. I start out really nice... But it's hard to be too nice for too long, because these guys turn into assholes real fast. I realize that EDD employees are the EPITOME of "overworked and underpaid" -- I'm sure SUCKS isn't the word to describe what it is to work for EDD right now -- but come on. That doesn't give anyone the right to treat me like shit when I call.

The man says, "Well, let me just take a look and see what's up..." and I wait.

And he says, "Well Miss D[my last name], it appears that you marked on your claim form that you were offered a job and you turned it down."

WTF?! Noooo. I feel like telling him, "No, I did that last summer and it was a mistake that I will NEVER make again, because it resulted in me getting ZERO money for NINE WHOLE WEEKS."

Instead, I take a deep breath and say, "No sir, I know for a fact that I did not mark that box on my form."

He says: "Let me take a closer look. Please hold." And then he comes back and says, "Well Miss D, it appears that you marked on your claim form that you are now attending some form of school or training."

I reply (getting frustrated now): "No sir. Trust me, I of all people would know if I were attending school, which I am not."

And he says, "Hmm. Well let me look at this one more time." And I'm on hold now.

And while I sit on hold, I'm thinking, "What the hell? Is he just going down the questions on the form just looking for a lie to catch me in? Is the EDD just wanting to hold my money for shits and giggles to see if I'm on top of my game? What the fuck is going on here? This is insane."

He comes back on the line and says, "Well D[my first name]," -- because apparently, his having to research the issue three times has now put us on a first-name basis-- "I have found the problem. It appears that you marked on your claim form that you did not look for work on the second week of your claim form."

And that was where I lost my shit. In my defense, it started slowly and I still tried to be nice.

"D[his first name]," I say, because if HE is on a first-name basis with ME, then so am I with HIM, "I am quite sure that I did not mark that I didn't look for work. Is it possible that there could have been a problem with the way the machine read the form when it was scanned?"

And that was where HE lost HIS shit, which started nowhere near as slowly or nicely as me losing mine.

"D," he says, "We are not going to play the blame game here. The machine read what it read, it reports what you marked, and it reports that you marked that you did not look for work. You may very well have NOT marked that, but all I can go by is what the machine tells me. And I know firsthand how nerve-wrecking it is to be filling out those forms and waiting nervously for a check to come 'cause I've been there, but you did what you did and that's why you have no check. And I'm not going to sit here and beat you up anymore, because the situation just is what it is."

I know that RIGHT THERE, I should have stopped that conversation and asked for a supervisor, because that guy just went full-bore asshole on me, but I didn't. For some reason, logic goes out the window in those last fleeting moments before your head explodes.

And so the story continues...

If you've ever been unemployed, you know that not only do you have to check the boxes on the front of the form, which is what the machine reads, but you know that if you DID in fact look for work, you have to fill out the back side of the form stating the names of the companies you applied to, what positions you applied for, who you contacted, where the companies are located, etc.... There are ten lines on the back of the form, where you can write in information for ten different companies, if you even looked that much during that time period, which I did -- in fact, I could have used MORE than ten lines -- and I was ready to point that out to my friend D at the EDD.

The problem with me losing my shit is that I don't do it like a normal person, or at least not like a normal person in my family. There have been jokes that I'm adopted because I don't really look a whole lot like either of my parents nor my brother. If I didn't know for a fact that I was a biological product of both of my parents (and therefore, by default, my brother), the way I lose my shit would be further convincing evidence of my adoption.

When my parents and brother get mad, they get loud (and they can get mean). My mom is a yeller straight out of the gate. She starts out loud and stays strong through the finish. My dad and brother escalate slowly from a normal talking voice to a louder stern voice to an angry voice of epic volume, which they maintain while they deliver their broken-record speeches over and over until they have beaten why they are mad at you into your brain.

But what do I do when I get good and mad?

I cry.

That's right, I cry.

Oh sure, I yell too, but it's kind of hard to distinguish between all the, well, crying. It's a sissy-ass way to be pissed off at someone, it doesn't exactly instill "fear" in the person I'm chewing out, it probably doesn't convey my anger very well, and it certainly never was much good for telling off the ex-boss, but it's what I do. Sue me.

So, crying (and yelling), I go off, gasping for breath as I go: "D," I start yelling, heart pounding, "I have a question for you. Even if I DID mark on the form that I didn't look for work, which I KNOW FOR A FACT I DID NOT DO, is there not a LIVE HUMAN who feeds my form into the machine and pulls it out when it's done, and could that HUMAN not TURN THE FORM OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE and see that THE WHOLE DAMN THING WAS FULL OF PLACES THAT I LOOKED FOR WORK?!?!"

And this is where my friend D started to backpedal real fast.

"Don't cry, D, don't cry," he said. "Generally, no one looks at the back of the forms unless there's a problem--"

"--Well there's obviously a problem here, don't you think?!" I retort.

"But I believe you," he said. "I believe that you looked for work. I hope I didn't cause those tears you're crying. Hey, this is a problem we can fix over the phone! I'll fix it right now. I'm just going to cancel that phone interview and send your information over to accounting for your check to be processed today. Are you okay?"

Take that, buddy.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I sniff, starting to catch my breath a little as my heart rate comes back down. "It's just that if you really understood how nervous a person gets waiting for their checks to come like you say you do, you probably wouldn't have gone off on me like that."

"Right," he said. "You're right."

Men. That's the closest I got to an apology.

Bottom line, he said he sent the check over for processing and that I should see it by this weekend, but to wait 7-10 days before calling, because that's just what the EDD gods do -- they don't entertain any inquiries until 7-10 days have passed. Sure, in another 7-10 days my cell phone could be disconnected and the repo man could be hunting my non-functional truck down, but don't you worry your pretty little head EDD, I won't call you before then.

Near the end of the day on Monday, I realized that that day should have been my uncle's 57th birthday. I mean, really, I knew it all day long, but for some reason it just hit me like a ton of bricks at the end of the day. It brought a lot of the emotions I had been feeling that day into perspective, even with the mood swings courtesy of Aunt Flo and the jerk my friend at the EDD. My uncle and I weren't terribly close when he was alive, but it still bothered me that it was his birthday, because at only 57 he should be here to celebrate it. Plus, it didn't help that I knew in my heart that my grandparents were hurting that day, mourning the loss of a child they'd outlived, and somewhere, my dad was hurting too.

Needless to say, it was a rough day.