Can I.......?

[audrey_aka_leah]

Can I.......?

Congratulation James on your redundancy! *giggles* youre signing on behind me! *sobs*

Still outta work, still looking, still wasting fone calls, still wasting papers and stamps, still being pestered by the people at the job centre, saying, if youd applied for so many jobs, why hadnt they contacted ya? like if they had, i would still be here doing nothing? sheesh!

I need a job, my hair is getting thin and grey, im getting old, and im feeling absolutely useless!

(okay, im done now, just bloody signed on and still fed up!)

[thorak_nemesis]

Can I.......?

chin up old boy im sorted now gone up in the world gone from smt opperative to test technition for a speed controller company .
something will turn up for you just keep hunting. i gave up with signing up to job agencies tho, ive been registered with one for 7-8 years and they have contacted me 3 times in that time and ammusingly they phoned me after i started at the new job, thats after telling them 8 months ago i was being made redundant.

any way good luck keep hunting local papers are quite good for jobs usually

[babeth]

Can I.......?

Audrey, one way to shut the idiots at the job centre up is keeping a draft or copy of all your postulation letters, together with the details from the companies you wrote to AND their rejections, in a nice scrap-book and thumping it upon their desks the moment they start whining again.
I had a colleague once whose husband had done just that, his scrap-book was quite impressive... 3 kilos of letters and ads landing on a job centre whiners desk makes a nice hard THUD sound.

I once had a job centre lady close to sobbing myself (and it still warms my heart whenever I think of it), when I challenged her to find a job for me and she couldnt because each and every one of my excuses why I couldnt get hired turned out to be true. The massive amount of rejections from potential employers shocked her because she used to believe that anyone could find a job if you just would do the effort of looking for one. Now she knows better, and she is a lot less arrogant.
She currrently has 9 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or ME) patients in her file and she knows it will be a cold day in hell when she finds a job for even one of us.

(Message edited by Babeth on October 15, 2005)

[pcbore]

Can I.......?

If there are so many reasons you cant go for a job, wouldnt it be better to sign on sick rather than as looking for full time work?

[maddox]

Can I.......?

Frank, Babeth is on disability.
But she rather would work inside het possibilities.
Now she feels a bit like a parasite sucking on the society.

[pcbore]

Can I.......?

Well then good on you Babeth. But still, the job centre can be rather inflexible at times

[thorak_nemesis]

Can I.......?

at least they were understanding enough with babeth to grant disability, when my M.E. was at its worst i was refused disability allowance, which made me feel more guilty that i was being a strain on the family as they were getting no support for my treatment, i feel this guilt did me no favors in getting better.

but yes i can understand how babeth can feel that way,

and it has only just in the last year been reconised as a proper condition medically over here

[babeth]

Can I.......?

Here in Belgium it has been regonized as a real problem a few years ago, so I was lucky. But I must undergo treatment at a CFS-reference-center and there are 6 of them in this country.
There is one just 15 minutes driving from our home, with a satellite hospital just 100 meters from our doorstep, but my physician sent me to the one in Leuven, which means 1 hour and 30 minutes travel, 3 hours in total both ways.
My last examination was in February 2003 and only on Friday November 21st Im going to get the final and completing examination before getting on the waiting list for treatment which is quite long.
You see, I called them last week in order to find out how much longer I had to wait, turns out they forgot in February 2003 to send my paperwork to the proper department in the hospital and Ive been waiting all this time, thinking I was already on the list. I do hope they will speed things up now because my disability lasts until November 2006.
And as Mario wrote, I do feel rotten about not being able to do my share for society. In Belgium the disabled are not permitted to have any kind of activity. Even helping as a volunteer in the local Red Cross required so much paperwork and vetting that I quit before I even started.

Our country has a professional tri-athlete who was a former Iron Man competitor (and winner), he got an accident while training and cant use his legs anymore. He wanted to go on with his sport in the wheelchair, but there is no great money to be made there and he needed his allowance. The administration has cut off his disability allowance because they found out that he has a company. He needed that company in order to travel to sports events and manage the administration for those events, he was not even paid by it, its just some people working for him. He lost his disability allowance because he is too active.
He has found out the hard way that our wonderful administration wont let you try to remain active. You must fester away in a wheelchair or bed if it was up to them.
Officially Im not even supposed to do for the FRA and the DRG what I do now.
Personally, to give you an example, I dont dare washing my windows, they could check on me and throw me off disability because seeing me doing that they would judge that I would clearly be able to go to work again. They dont understand that a simple activity like cleaning my windows leaves me unable to do much else in the next 3 days.
I hate bureau(c)ra(t)cy.

(Message edited by Babeth on October 16, 2005)

(Message edited by Babeth on October 16, 2005)