#91 Yelling at Employees of Government Agencies

There comes a time in every unemployed person’s life where they lose their so-called patience and fly off the handle. Usually, the ones who suffer from these brief moments are pets who don’t understand what’s being said or outsourced call center workers who don’t understand what’s being said. On all other days, primarily the days where the unemployed are finally forced to do something productive like mail off late thank you cards from Christmas or figure out how to renew their unemployment, the victims of the outbursts tend to be government employees. 

While people might be quick to blame unemployment solitude for causing the jobless to lose their social skills, and thereby causing them to lose their cool when interacting with government employees, anyone who has ever dealt with any sort of government agency will know that is not the case. Everybody has a problem dealing with the inefficiencies of government agencies and trying to get answers from the generally useless employees who hate their jobs and are only there for the benefits. The only difference between the frustration the unemployed and employed feel when dealing with such agencies is the unemployed don’t have the excuse of putting off their tasks when they encounter seemingly endless busy signals or messages relaying lies that the next representative will be with them shortly, and they don’t get to bail when they encounter a long line at the post office. 

When they finally get through to a representative, frustration levels are already sky high. The worst possible thing they can find out is after hours of marathon re-dialing because the unemployment insurance office doesn’t have enough employees to support the unemployed, is that they’ve either reached the wrong department or that the only person who can answer their questions is out of the office. When the employee suggests something as infuriating as “looking for the form on the web site” they are unaware of the tirade they have just unleashed upon themselves. The unemployed know it’s wrong to lose their temper at the individual employee who can’t help but be insanely stupid after working for such an inefficient department. But sometimes, after dealing with the ineptitude of government agency employees for way too long, there’s something that just feels so good to bite the hand that feeds them. A long rant ending with, “The longer you give me the runaround the longer I’m going to suck you guys dry” is usually a great way to put an end to a frustrating encounter with a government employee.

Tags: government inefficiency, on the government, small victory, yelling at people