Barefoot in the Garden of the Devil

Poof.

I'm sitting at my table, typing away on the Internet and POOF, it just stops. Nothing. Nada. The signal drops like a cannonball. I test and check my hardware and find the modem brain dead. Well I'll be damned. They cut off my Internet. WTF? I don't remember seeing a bill, or a cut off notice. Maybe an outage with their routers?

Uggh, and then I remember the mail drop at the front door. I hope these people aren't fucking shit up for me. You see, I don't have a mailbox. We have a mantrap with a window and you have to ask the security guards behind it for your mail. These potato-heads are the ones who sort and hand you your envelopes. That's great and all, but these negative IQ's are not mailmen. Further, I've been having a rash of missing mail in the past two weeks, that I know of. F.E.G.S. WECare states that they sent me two letters. I only got one, and I got it late. And whose to know about an invoice from my cable company. This is not helpful for me, because these fucked up letters from WECare can cost me all of my benefits.

Why would my fucking Internet halt just like that? It must be an outage. If it was my bill, I have no clue how to hunt that fucker down and rectify this mess in any length of time. I'll be without my precious Internet late at night for awhile. That really sucks. Well fuck this, I say, and pack up all of my gear and split. My plan now...to go down to Waverly Job Center and deal with them about my case. But the plan had one caveat: that I would not go early down there, but instead go midday. To let the crowds pass. I make my move. Of course the train station exit is clear across town, so I had to march through the bitter New York cold to get to the Center on 14th street. A drab, nondescript building in the center of the block.

Once inside I am directed to the second floor where in one large room there is one of those corrals that forces people to make a pretty tight a zig zag line. Four women are ahead of me, and practically fall over each other trying to make it through the door before me. I gave them the right of way because that's what I hate the most out of Social Service: a completely selfish, Skeksis-like attitude. I stroll in behind them to find the huge room absolutely empty. Yeah, empty, except for the four women who run through the corral, zig zagging to the front. I walk in behind them, and by the time I reach the front of the line they are all taken care of and I'm next. AMAZING. My plan worked for a change!!

I go up to the customer help and tell her about my situation. She asks me for my social security number and then studies her computer monitor. "It says here that your case is not here." Where is it then? "In Brooklyn on Duffield street. Do you know where that is?" Yeah but why is it there? I live in Manhattan. "I don't know." She returns to the screen. "It says here that you have a 9:00 appointment today." You've got to be kidding me. I didn't get any mail telling me that I had an appointment. "It says right here that you have a 9:00." FUCK. Do you think that I can go late? "Maybe. Or go tomorrow."

SHIT. I thank her and skedaddle. I know that I'm late but I'm just going to say that I never got a letter from them. I'm sure that I'll still be able to see the Case Worker (they don't like being called social workers any more). I hop on the train and ride down to Brooklyn where I find the same type of drab old building. Nondescript and lifeless, with the criminal element loitering at the front door. I walk through them and go through a checkpoint where my bag is searched and then I am scanned with a wand. It finds my key, MP3 player, battery, which I take out of my pocket. It finds my pen knife. It's just a pen knife. "You can't bring that in with you." Well can I give it to you. "No, we don't take things. You'll have to leave it outside." Damn! I go back outside and walk a few paces where I don't believe that I'm watched and put the little pen knife on a window sill. Then I returned to the check point only to have that fucking wand beep some more. "What have you got on you still. A cellphone or something?" Look dude, I've emptied my pockets twice here. I don't have what you're looking for. Seriously. He stands for a minute, staring at me and then waves me on.

I collect all my shit, shoot through and head upstairs to the second floor.

I'm greeted with a long line into a rather large waiting room, chock full of mothers, children, fathers. Each of them wearing tired, exhausted expressions. It was the most dismal place on Earth. I get on the line and crack open an interesting book, Delta of Venus, by Anais Nin. Behind me there is an irate, loudmouth woman, constantly repeating the same scenario chock full of expletives. "These fuckin' people don't know what the fuck they're doing. They sit behind their desks! They don't have to come out here and sit in these waiting rooms and deal with shit. I don't have time for this. And they closed my case too, just like that! Because THEY were the ones who mailed my appointment papers to the wrong place!"

Hmmmmm, well I see I'm not the only one with that problem.

I'm called to the desk. "Are you here for an appli- cation?" No, I'm here to see a 'Social Worker'. "You do that on the first floor at the desk." Oh, okay. (Bad call Hobobob) It wasn't all that big a deal to me that I waited something like twenty minutes to get here on that line. I was actually willing to go downstairs and wait on a line three times as long. But as I motioned to move, the agent said to me: "Wait a second, let me see what's going on here. Your case has been sent to [some kind of unintelligible acronym]. Oh, it looks like you missed a few appointments to WECare." It's a long story. But, I'm supposed to have a Nine O'clock appointment to see a 'Social Worker' today and I'm really late. She frowns, now looking at the screen. "You don't have an appointment today." I don't? "No, you have one scheduled on the Twelfth, not today." Now I frown. I was told at Waverly... "No. Come back on the Twelfth. Your paperwork hasn't even been mailed out to you yet." And there we go, mailing these fucking notices out with three days to answer them. What the fuck is that about?

I take a print out that she gives me and head out, leaving the packed building and turning the corner for my pen knife. It was gone. Only in fucking Brooklyn.

Hobobob