Edit: I've been informed the specific incident in the link is an urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp - I really should have checked the date, as is good practice in general. However, that article served only as my prompt; the conditions and treatment of unemployed people I wrote about is true and drawn from my personal experience. Original post continues unaltered.

According to an article in the (UK) Telegraph, a woman in Germany faces the loss of her unemployment payments for refusing work at a brothel.

The problem here is the way we as a society construct unemployment, not that this time it is a brothel. That just serves as a newsworthy example and perhaps misdirection because of the disgust and contempt we tend to direct at sex work culturally.

Because we insist on treating the unemployed as suspect, as lazy losers and scammers, and because it looks good for organisational numbers to get as much throughput as possible, we require anyone receiving assistance to accept any job offer they are physically capable of performing. So you end up with situations like this, where a person is threatened with being cut off unless they accept a job they personally find repugnant (or soul-killing, or etc.).

Having a quota of documented job applications to meet, and rules like this, meant that when I was actively searching I had to restrict the applications which I thought might get a response to only the positions I felt I wouldn't be trying to then get out of a few weeks later, and then make the rest of the numbers with applications I thought looked plausible but which would not be interested in me as a candidate.

Rules like this led to me saying yes to a lot of offers from the agency I was assigned to, despite believing I would be a bad fit for the job in question, because I was worried my income could be cut off if I refused. This led to me having a whole week of training and a job interview for an area - sales - which I have actually worked in before and found to be a field which- well. I am certainly capable of attempting to sell things to people but I've never actually managed it, and since that earlier position was commission-based I had quit without ever being paid. So I spent the whole time being trained for this interview and actually having the interview afraid that I was going to get pushed into a job I hate and would be no good at simply to get an organisation another "successful job placement" check-mark, while also believing that if I appeared to do anything less than my best to get that job, I could be reported and penalised.

Well, I got lucky that time, and they didn't want anyone from that group that had been coached for the job on offer. But, my point is, the problem here is not that in this specific case it is a brothel this woman could be punished for not working in. The problem is how we treat unemployed job-seekers.

Yesterday's issue has been resolved. Called Centrelink early this morning, had to lie to the automated call routing because it couldn't understand my speaking the information it demanded I speak, so said I didn't have that information and got put through to a person, to whom I spoke the aforementioned identifying code. Got told the solution to my problem was simple - all I had to do was show up to a Centrelink office for a drop-in interview and my payments would be reinstated.

The time then was ~09:25. I had an appointment with my case manager at 10:45, a 20 minute drive away. Roughly halfway between these locations was the Centrelink office my appointments have been at, so I picked up and left early to try and get both taken care of on the same trip.

Unexpected delay locating car keys, arrived at Centrelink ~09:45, waited in line to get an appointment, waited in chair to be called after that. Got called about 5 minutes before my other appointment was due. :-/ Fix consisted of sitting in silence for several minutes while the person who had called me typed things. No questions were asked of me. Eventually I was told that if I keep missing appointments my payment will keep being suspended without notification (the without notification is the annoying bit, am not surprised suspension would be repeated). Was told a date for the next appointment in ~6 weeks would be mailed to me. Only question was if I had anything else to talk about, said no, that am now running late for another appointment, and left.

Got call from case manager while stopped at intersection, apparently she is booked up for the rest of the day. Had to hurriedly hang up on, called back after finding somewhere safe to park, wrote down day and time of new appointment next Friday, returned home.

That was all understandable and annoying. The frustrating part is Centrelink's entirely goal seems to be for me to be physically present in one of their offices for 10-20 minutes every six weeks. There doesn't seem to be any other point. I don't get asked for details of my job searching in any way (not that I would appreciate having to provide that, but at least it would suggest they are getting information on anything beyond my ability to follow people who call my name and sit in a seat for a little while). In this case there wasn't even any direct communication, just an implicit acknowledgement that I entered their building and consequently my punishment is rescinded for now. If I had issues I needed to talk to someone at Centrelink about I could call them, like I did today.

I certainly don't want a tighter leash in this area, especially since it looks like the racist income management situation in the Northern Territory is going to be switched to mostly classist by bringing it nationwide (that's the system in which the federal government holds on to half the money they 'pay' you and issues you a card which can only be used in certain locations to pay for things they believe are appropriate for social security recipients to spend money on). But right now what little income I have is primarily predicated on my ability to enter a specified building once every six weeks, and that is thoroughly pointless. A hoop for the sake of having a hoop, the closest thing it has to a purpose is giving Centrelink a reason not to fire a whole lot of its consultants.

On the bright side, this afternoon I got to enjoy a long, fun reading session on Skype. I read a chapter from The Ersatz Elevator, Pazi read a chapter from Singularity Sky, and Ami read a chapter from I, Q. Three fun, delightfully different sf stories shared among some of the people most important in my life. That in itself would be enough to make a day a good one, even this one.

Just found out while reporting to Centrelink my jobsearching and 'income' for the past fortnight that my unemployment payments have been suspended. It seems I missed an appointment two weeks ago, which I must have forgotten to mark on my calendar. :-/

This is frustrating. The only notification I got was a pdf on their website after logging in, no phone call or letter. I suppose they don't have to... I opted out of online notifications the first time, last year, but they opted me back in a few weeks later.

These meetings are literally 5-10 minute affairs, in which I am asked if I am looking for work, I say I am, then we make another appointment. My theory is these six-weekly interviews were instituted when, after shunting as many people as possible to online fortnightly reporting, Centrelink realised it had a lot of appointment staff now doing nothing and added another layer of reporting.

Ah well. Will have to call them tomorrow and ask what manner of supplication I must make to have an income again. Hopefully it won't be too onerous; I have a lot of plans which involve having an income, such as paying off university debt. Being free of those hoops to prove I am a 'good unemployed person' would be a relief, but I doubt it would coincide with a sudden offer of employment, so however bothersome it is I need to convince Centrelink to put me back on the list of worthy persons.

Another couple of days this week, of volunteering at the charity shop done. I talked to some other people there who like me are there assigned as part of the government's 'work for the dole' program. Seems morale in that department is catastrophically low.

We have a personnel excess - this is not the sort of operation that needs a 1:1 or higher ratio of floor staff to customers. Pretty much the only direction given to anyone in this position is to 'work the floor' and pick up clothes dropped by customers, with a distinct lack of hoped-for useful experience, such as getting taught to work the register or donation processing activities, which seem to be covered by the regular staff. I have been making an effort to be assertive and check several times a day if there is anything I could be doing, which netted me doing some washing dishes in the staff room today. That was a welcome change.

I am not the only one plotting getting out of there. Have plans in place to pursue some more library volunteering opportunities tomorrow and the next day, which will hopefully bear fruit and enable me to occupy my time doing something more  satisfying with my time.

I don't think I would mind working in a retail environment, despite it not being at all my first choice, provided there was actually work for me to do, to keep me occupied doing it. But there isn't, and I need to find something else.

The following violates my single topic per post rule. I blame myself for not updating more diligently.

Offered to drive my sister to the station on Monday, as she'd just missed her bus. That was how we found out the car wasn't working. Bit of a worry, as I had an appointment Tuesday with my case manager.

I was sure it was not the battery, as I had driven the car just a few days after I got back and it was fine then. Plus that excursion was in the middle of the day, making it very unlikely I could have left the lights on.

As it turns out, the battery was flat. Still don't know how that happened, hoping it won't repeat itself. Took a few hours charging.

On the next day I went out to my meeting, only to be told I had misremembered and it was actually on Wednesday. Wouldn't have minded so much, except for the temperature being 40 much of this week. Took the opportunity, anyway, to poke around nearby shopping centre to see if I could find any items I considered urgent. Didn't find a good new water bottle, nor a new wallet. Did find that HDMI cables are expensive enough to make me question the worth of purchasing them.

I returned on Wednesday for the actual meeting. Due to the difficulty I have had securing sufficient mandatory volunteering hours it seems I shall have to do 30 hours/week at a nearby charity shop, if that too does not fall through. Expected to start after final arrangements settled in a couple of weeks and continue until mid-May.

It also came out that my case manager was not aware of my autism diagnosis. My first case manager never noted it in my file, and I do not recall if that was by agreement or not. So now I have been presented with an option.

I can have that noted on my record and possibly (or possibly not, at the whim of Centrelink) be moved to disability employment services, with a new case manager and presumably more focused assistance, and only be required to obtain part-time employment. At the moment, Centrelink doesn't intend to leave me alone until I find a full-time job.

I am concerned accruing official disability labels might hamper my immigration potential to other countries. I am also worried that I am very bad at being concrete about things I might benefit from, and what if I don't actually need any of those services? It seems like what I need help with is what anyone struggling to find a job could probably stand to be helped with.

My worry is I will either not benefit or suffer some long-term harm from the categorisation. But of course I also wonder if I would benefit. Might be something I could gain from which I don't realise or know how to express.

Clearly what I need to do is some research on the possibilities. I have a few weeks to think about it anyway, and my current plan is to try several weeks of the planned enforced volunteering first and see how I handle it - one of my concerns about myself is whether I can handle full-time work or whether I will collapse under it. The library placements I did were great, and I performed well, but so emotionally draining at the time I wondered whether I could handle a full work week of that every week, when two days a week were draining me so much. But I have to try a fuller schedule to find out.

Afterwards, another visit to the shopping centre. I picked up a copy of Clocks by Elena Kats-Chernin and, by serendipitous good fortune a secondhand copy of Metroid Prime Trilogy, which game had been discontinued over a year ago and which at that same location I'd been unable to find a copy despite diligent scouring when I tried. Also, some more looking around revealed HDMI cables to be more expensive than I thought.