Unemployment Issues (or I Shouldn’t Stay Quiet)

My last day of work was on September 20th. I was done at 1pm and as soon as I got home, I got on my computer and filed for unemployment. It took about 15 minutes and I got a confirmation online that I had filed. I was supposed to get a paper confirmation of my unemployment status within 10 days.

I never got anything. At first, I thought it was because we had a new mail person for a few days and they never brought anyone the correct mail. But I started to worry.

You can only talk to someone at the unemployment office on the phone between 8am and noon. You can also submit questions online. So I did the form online but I also called.

Everyone must have been calling because for 3 days, I could not get through on the phone! I still hadn’t gotten any other response from the unemployment office so yesterday I knew I needed to keep calling.

Somehow, I got through to somebody around 9am (I made about 100 calls prior to that yesterday with no luck). They looked up my confirmation number and said that I never filed for unemployment.

That’s just ridiculous! I know I filed and that I filled out all the paperwork. I re-filed on the phone yesterday and they let me know that they backdated my filing but I still would not get any paperwork for about 10 days.

So by the time I get my paperwork, I might be back at work. I will still get checks for the weeks that will have passed, but I might not have the money by the time that my rent is due. And I don’t have enough saved right now to pay rent without my unemployment money.

I guess I was thinking too lightly about unemployment. It was so easy last time and there was almost no delay in anything. I thought it would be like this again.

I also should not have just figured it was a mail issue behind me not getting my paperwork. I wish I had spoken up sooner so the delay wouldn’t have been as long.

But as people say, hindsight is 20/20. But I know for the future to take more responsibility for all of this and to speak up sooner if I think that something is wrong.

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