Ugh, I hope you feel a least a little better getting this off your chest. *hugs* It's so frustrating that the people who do abuse the system make it so difficult for the people who legitimately need it. (Because, of course, we only hear about the people who abuse it!) This reminds me quite a lot of a training session I went to back when I was working on the floor at my museum. It was an attempt to help us deal with rude and angry guests, and it was by far the most helpful thing I've ever heard. It was based on the principle that it costs me nothing and does zero damage to me as a person to assume that the reason a guest is hostile is because they're having the worst day of their life. Make up a scenario, any scenario, of what could have happened to that person just before he or she entered the building, and go with it. And then assume they're taking their frustration for that event out on me because they feel helpless to do otherwise. It was depressing at times, but it helped me SO MUCH, even after I stopped working in public service
( ... )
The problem is, in the eyes of these people, there is literally NO WAY that a person could be NOT abusing the system, unless that person never ever deviates from a "How To Be Poor the CORRECT Way" script, and then the very ability to follow that script proves that they could work and are thus just scamming!
If anything, I know more people who fall into this category who are made to feel too guilty to sign up for food stamps or WIC or other forms of assistance that people in public might *notice* they were on and end up going hungry or stretching resources unnecessarily thin to avoid it.
What I never get about these accusations is that if poor people are such sneaky, manipulative scammers, do these people really think they would be poor?
It's because they don't want to work! They want to fill out a few forms and then sit back and collect a welfare check! [It was two comments to that general effect in two completely different places that pushed me over the edge to writing this.]
Never mind that being a "charity case" is a full-time job of itself sometimes. The most striking example from work is of domestic violence victims in one of the mid-Hudson shelters who were scheduled for twenty-one appointments in one week. All while trying to make sure that they didn't encounter the abuser. They're supposed to ALSO look for a job or hold one down HOW??
And it has to be during the regular work day, and what employer is going to give someone three days off every month?
But since theoretically under FMLA there exists a legal obligation to do exactly that...people don't realize what a barrier this is. Because, of course, FMLA only applies to those who were able to work 1250 hours over the course of a year first, without needing FMLA benefits, and doesn't apply at all to many small businesses. And filing the reason for needing the FMLA gets into the whole disclosure issue again, which is its own ugly when mental illness is involved. (John had a rather nasty experience with that; then again, the HR office at the company in question is Evil With Evil Sauce to begin with. This is also the place where his boss called at 7 AM, three hours after Alex's birth, to ask why the hell John wasn't there, and when John explained, "My wife just gave birth, I called in yesterday when we went to the hospital!" the dude snarled "Congratulations!" and hung up.)
i totally need to print this out and make my mom read it. she goes off on these rants and it drives me crazy, especially when she told me i should try to get SSI and all that because "everyone else is doing it."
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Never mind that being a "charity case" is a full-time job of itself sometimes. The most striking example from work is of domestic violence victims in one of the mid-Hudson shelters who were scheduled for twenty-one appointments in one week. All while trying to make sure that they didn't encounter the abuser. They're supposed to ALSO look for a job or hold one down HOW??
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But since theoretically under FMLA there exists a legal obligation to do exactly that...people don't realize what a barrier this is. Because, of course, FMLA only applies to those who were able to work 1250 hours over the course of a year first, without needing FMLA benefits, and doesn't apply at all to many small businesses. And filing the reason for needing the FMLA gets into the whole disclosure issue again, which is its own ugly when mental illness is involved. (John had a rather nasty experience with that; then again, the HR office at the company in question is Evil With Evil Sauce to begin with. This is also the place where his boss called at 7 AM, three hours after Alex's birth, to ask why the hell John wasn't there, and when John explained, "My wife just gave birth, I called in yesterday when we went to the hospital!" the dude snarled "Congratulations!" and hung up.)
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The number of people in that Community Health course I wanted to thump for perpetuating the bullshit, oy... better for me that I left.
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