The Steps Required to Collect Unemployment
Reese: Hey, dude, sucks that you got laid off.
Marcel: Yeah, I know, man. But I think I’m just gonna take this opportunity to find myself, you know—like take a road trip somewhere or do a house swap with some guy in Arkansas or something and live among people who aren’t always looking out for number one.
Reese: Have you filed for unemployment yet? That’s, like, fucking free money.
Marcel: No, how do you do that?
Reese: Well, you have to, like, go online and fill out some forms and stuff.
Marcel: Dude, I don’t have Internet right now. Well, not in my room, at least. I have to press up against the wall in the living room and steal from those chicks who work at that lame home décor magazine. Their apartment always smells real nice, though.
Reese: Well, you can use my Wi-Fi. It takes like two seconds.
Marcel: OK—let’s smoke first, take the edge off the depression blues. So all I gotta do is go on some Web site and then I get fucking free money?
Reese: Well, they also make you go to some office in downtown Brooklyn and meet with a career counselor or some shit like that…
Marcel: What?! Seriously? So they’ll help me get a new job as graphic designer for a Web site run by an alternative Brooklyn gallery?
Reese: Um… Probably not. You’ll most likely fill out some more forms and then sit in a waiting room for two hours next to some guy who smells like that really rank fancy cheese. And as you sit there, feeling hung over and tired because it’s 10 a.m. and you drank yourself into a stupor the night before at that bar where they give you free drinks because they feel sorry for you, you’ll probably start to become overwhelmed by a crushing wave of depression. The wave will first be brought on by the incessant glow of the florescent lights and the pathetically “inspiring” posters emblazoned with lighthouses plastered on the walls, and then will intensify with the creeping knowledge that your four-plus years of higher education have basically amounted to naught. And just when you feel the urge to slink back out the front door, past the TWA-style security and the bored-looking cops wanding down an endless line of other unemployed people, a counselor will call you into a beige cubicle, where she will give you a list of job-finding resources. At the top of that list will be Craigslist. Then you get the free money.
Marcel: Uhh… I think I’m just gonna take the Bolt Bus to Philly this weekend. I’ll figure out all that shit when I get back.
Reese: I need a drink.
If you wanna learn more about unemployment, lose your job. Or buy my friend’s ‘zine. (stuffhipstershate)
Four-plus years of higher education… yes.
