I'm riding on the train back uptown, into the belly of the Bronx.
The train goes from subway to elevated to subway to elevated. I soar, at times, over the rooftops of buildings and the gray haze of the Manhattan skyline off in the distance. I bury my nose into my book, Love In the Ruins to compress time. I make an early start of it today, getting on the Way by 9:30am, just behind the maddening rush hour crowd and get to the lifeless, dull tan, yet very contemporary building....035 Job Center, Dyckman. Inside, I never described to you, is very neat, clean, in fact futuristic. Unlike the Mines of Moria in Brooklyn, which was like an ancient police precinct or school building...dark, gloomy, joyless. 035 is brightly lit, with white, white walls, like walking through Heaven.
There are wide television screens on the walls, and monitors displaying the last number called in the waiting rooms so that people with a language barrier can follow easily. There are scores of crisp, uniformed security guards manning posts or walking about and those Tensa-barriers. You know, those chrome posts with the fabric railings that attach to one another making a pathway so that a crowd of people can line up into a single cue, and march to the reception desk in orderly file. Oh, so human. Unlike the Mines of Moria, they at least attempt to treat you like you possess a soul.
It's always the same, when I walk in...there is no line of people filling the Tensa-barrier. Just one or two individuals waiting for a row of about five receptionists. Two are huddled around a monitor, one is reading paperwork, one is helping out a person that was on the line, and the last one is fidgeting for a moment, then stands and exits from behind the reception desk to roam in a large circle, as if trying to find his lost train of thought. The only one person working the desk, finishes with one individual and calls another. I wait behind the next person. Time drips on, the next person is called, and I continue to wait. Then, from some antennae out in the farthest reaches of space comes an invisible signal that causes the roaming receptionist to stop, blink, look about and realize that he is standing in the middle of the atrium and not behind the reception desk. He muddles back behind the desk and calls out: "Next."
I approach, hand him my paperwork from yesterday and explain to him that I was told that I have an NOI appointment downstairs today in this building. He nods, and gives me a number: X 4002 on a big yellow 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper. "Go downstairs," he says and I do, following the futher directions of the security guards in my path and enter into a waiting room sparsely filled with mothers, children and few men. I open my book, make myself comfortable and listen to the numbers being called out. They are all 'D' series numbers, not 'X'. "D1004, D1005, D1006....etc." I pay it no mind, I just keep an ear out.
Then a short, female security guard appears at the door and shouts "2 and 3!" Everyone looks at her, and I look up. "2 and 3!" She calls out again, this time pissed that no one is answering her. With a final huff, she bellows: "Numbers X4002 and X4003!" I shake my head, because it's this kind of thinking that I have to get used to when dealing with these crack addicted people. They actually expect you to read their warped minds on all fronts. If you can't, be prepared for their wrath. I stand, and so does a diminutive, elderly Latin woman and we follow the Security Guard who takes us a short way to a pair of double doors and points ahead: "Through there," she says. We march on without her, passing through the doors and into a hall branching off to the left and right. Doors line both walls in both directions and nothing more. The elderly woman looks up at me with a lost face, as much as mine must have looked lost to her. 'Where to now?' her eyes said to me. I hunch my shoulders.
Far down, coming from a turn in the corridor on the left, appears another Security Guard; a tall, lanky man waving us down, "This way." We march down to him and he leads us into a cramped office. Five hard plastic chairs line the wall on the left, otherwise the room was stuffed with cubicle partitions. The elderly woman and I take a seat. She continues to look at me as if I had answers. I don't. The Security Guard asks someone unseen if she is ready for '2'. She barks back at him, "I'll let you know!" He walks off dejectedly and stands before us. Presently, she shouts: "I'm ready!" He looks down at us, "2?" I raise my hand and stand. He leads me a short distance through a dreary cubicle hell to a tiny cubicle, a chair to the side of a wrap around desk. A hefty, Black woman has her back to me, hunched over her cell phone, texting with her thumbs. I take a seat. "Take a seat," she growls.
I sit there for about three minutes, twiddling my fingers as she continues to text away, bent over like a miser over his fortune. I look at her cramped space and all around are tacked on the walls, memos, notices, emails, instructions and peppered in this miasma of information are inspirational quotations and exhortations, like: 'You are your greatest cheerleader," "Hold your head up, God is supporting you," "Don't put that gun in your mouth!!" I think back at the obese Social Worker yesterday that could not go on another second without taking her lunch to come out and handle my case in five or ten minutes. Around her cubicle were inspirational quotes also. Hmmmm. I have to think about this.
The beast suddenly turns on me. She looks and acts like a rabid pitbull, her eyes demonic red. "Where is your notice?" I think about what she wants, then hand her the yellow paper handed to me at reception. She snatches it from my hand, tossing it aside. "NO! Your notice of discontinuance of your benefits!" She was exasperated with me already. I open my valise and hand over the notice mailed to me. She looks at it and looks up at me, "This is all because you didn't attend the CASAC meeting mentioned here on June 2nd." Oh yes I did, I reply. She turns to her computer, types in my case number, examines the data, then turns her dogface back to me, "NO, you didn't. It says so right here!" I reach back into my valise and produce for her my confirmation paper from the CASAC examiner with her signature and check in the box stating clearly: "Applicant/Participant has cooperated and is returning to your program. Please excuse for today." Followed by the date, June 2nd, 2010.
The pitbull is doubly angered now. She looks at the notice and says: "Well, we can't help you here. You have to go to 109 East 16th Street to have you benefits restored." I frown. What? "I can't help you here," she repeats slowly, as if explaining it to an idiot. "You have to go to 109 to have them stop the discontinuance of your benefits." Suddenly, the patience fiber in my demeanor snaps. You have got to be kidding me. Are you serious? She nods defiantly. You mean to tell me that those evolutionary throwbacks upstairs in reception and the caseworker on my re-certification were somehow on crack when they told me that I had to come here to see you, to have this resolved? Why couldn't they tell me to go to 109 yesterday?
The pitbull lays my notice down before me. "This was generated at 109, see here?" She points to an address in the upper left hand corner. "You have to go to 109 to resolve this." I look at her as if she lost her mind. Tell me, where on this whole entire notice can you point out to me instructions that state I have to go to 109... this address in the corner to have this resolved? She takes out a highlighter and highlights the address again. "It's right here." I blink. Are you and every one here lost? Here, let me show you the instructions given. I read the instructions out to her: 'If you think our decision was wrong or if you do not understand our decision, or need additional information about the reason for our decision, please call us to arrange a meeting.' It says absolutely nothing about going to 109. Further, your numbskulls told me specifically that this meeting was to occur here. Now you all have computers, and you're going to sit here and tell me that only you understand what is displayed on that screen?
She growls. "You have to go to 109 to resolve this," pointing again to the address. Why don't you point to the address on the ceiling? I asked her sarcastically. That address is meaningless to me if there aren't any instructions with it. Try to act like you don't work here, ma'am. Normal humans can't read between the lines. She sits back and huffs. I'm barking back at her with the same energy that she is giving me. If she was at flash-point, she must have been concerned that I was at flash-point also. She takes a pause to lower the heat of the stove and then says, "So what action did you take?" I filed for a Fair Hearing. That's the other half of the directions given. I reach into my valise and produce that paperwork from the Internet form that one has to fill out to schedule a Fair Hearing. "Okay," she says, "then what will happen is that they will discontinue your benefits tomorrow at 109, and when Fair Hearing in Brooklyn processes your request, they will reinstate your benefits until your court date." Are you sure about this? Are you reading your computer like your non-college grads upstairs?
She smirks angrily. "I know what I'm talking about, sir." She hands me back my papers. I snatch them from her hand. "I think we're finished here," she stares at me. I am dismissed. I look at the papers in my hand. It's just the notice. Uhh, I say to her, may I have my CASAC confirmation letter there? I point to her desk. I'm going to need that when I take this place to court. She turns, looks down at the paper and in self disgust, picks it up and hands it to me. I have the sheer joy of snatching another piece of paper from her hand. Thanks for your very professional aid, I state, standing. She has no reply as I walk out and down the short aisle and I'm flanked by the Security Guard down the hall, to the double doors. Then I head up the stairs. I gratefully leave 035, the fucking mind-fuck that this building is, and hop on the Way back to the Upper West side.
I am actually fuming, simply because I don't have the money to hink up and down the city, chasing the stupid directions of these brainless idiots. They'll have you chasing your tail until you actually catch it. And if you catch up to your own tail, you can pretty best believe that you are fucked. Now, my entire survival this month hangs on if this bitch is right and they free up my benefits so that I can get some cash money from the state to buy food for the next two weeks. Without it, I'm going to be rationing like a war prisoner. I pretty well better go over my notes in my laptop of the midtown soup kitchens again to see if I can go and procure enough food to last until they actually reinstate my benefits.
That's alright. I've gone days without food. Trust me, this is only a test of Hobobob's emergency broadcasting system. I get off the Way, and go home, dropping off my paperwork, changing into my sneakers and headed out once again, this time walking downtown to 59th street and back for the exercise and to air out my head. I was still fuming over 035 and it's brain dead help. I wish I could record and post their stupidity on the Internet for all to see, especially their bosses who sit in their high places, confident that those on the lowest rung of society are taken care of. Yeah, we're taken care of alright. I feel like returning with a taser and zapping all of these useless motherfuckers whenever they give me the wrong answer.
But there is a silver lining to this insanity. I am learning, more and more, how to deal with the crafty acts of these losers, and sooner or later, I will be very proficient in dealing deftly with them. That's my only upside to this. I return to my neighborhood, and go food shopping at the nearest grocery store. Then pick up my prescriptions and head upstairs to fill my cupboards and refrigerator, counting the foodstuffs and the number of meals that I can make and cross check them with the calendar days, to approximate how long they will last. Roughly two weeks. It will take four weeks to restart my benefits if this woman is wrong. If she is right, maybe a week or two. I smile, a deep, cheery smile. Something like this may stop pitbull's ass, but it will not stop a hobo.
I sit on my bed and stare at my laptop. Nothing will stop the hobo, will it my baby? I look at it's blank screen. It says nothing.... It agrees with me.Hobobob
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