in the entire history of the human species, can there ever have been gathered under one roof a sorrier collection of plankton-brained halfwits whose incompetence even considered the outside possibility of approaching that of the staff of manchester city council benefits unit? now, i’m all in favour of trying to give the disabled and socially disadvantaged the opportunity to make something of themselves and to contribute to society. but surely transplanting an entire asylum for the congenitally incompetent and terminally pea-brained into the heart of local government is taking things a bit too far?!
manchester city council benefits unit, for those of you whose lives have thus far remained untainted by interaction with them, are the department within manchester town-hall which deals with [amongst other things] applications for housing benefit - ie. help with paying the rent for those on a low income.
the benefits unit was already in existence when i arrived in manchester nearly 20 years ago and doubtless for a long time before that. in all that time, one of their primary duties has been the processing of applications for housing benefit. now, the casual observer may naively imagine that this combination of both length of and purpose of existence might have imbued the benefits unit with a certain familiarity with and - heck! - even a modicum of competence in dealing with housing benefit application forms. but nothing could be further from the truth! it seems that every incoming application form is greeted with the same blank incomprehension that a goldfish must feel when travelling to a corner of his bowl he hasn’t visited for ten seconds or more.
back in the day when i was unemployed, i had to regularly apply for housing benefit at six monthly intervals. like some ancient astrologer anxiously scanning the heavens waiting for the celestial bodies to swing fleetingly into portentious conjunction, i would wait for about 8 weeks for the happy coincidence that meant the person whose turn it was to borrow the departmental braincell for the afternoon, happened to be the same one charged with processing my claim. meanwhile i’d be falling further and further into arrears; fending of the landlord with one hand whilst attempting to ring the town-hall with the other to find out what was going on.
note the use of italics round the word ‘attempting’ there. you see, the inevitable by-product of submitting an application into this virtual blackhole, is that the humble supplicant is then forced to attempt to ‘chase up’ said application at regular intervals, just to jockey things along enough to guarantee it will be processed as quickly as 8 weeks. i used to try writing to them but never got a reply so i finally gave up, assuming that; either no-one there can read - or possibly, they can read but can’t write back as they’re not allowed access to sharp objects. unfortunately this fear of theirs of the written word, leaves using the telephone as the only option.
for millenia men [many of them mad] have dreamed of raising the dead. but was there ever a being so insane he believed he could make contact with manchester city council benefits unit by phone? dare i say - “raising the brain-dead”? in the olden days, they never answered the phone at all. they would flee from its ringing like starlings startled by the farmer’s shotgun. throwing themselves under their desks in terror, eyes rolling, clutching at each other for comfort as steam from the pools of urine round their feet burned their eyes - waiting anxiously for the noise to stop. emerging only to strategically leave the handset off the hook for the duration of their lunch hour.
however, you can’t halt the march of progress and the internet age has brought advancement to the art of ignoring the phone. nowadays, anyone foolhardy enough to ring manchester city council benefits unit is greeted with a recorded message informing them that all staff are busy [doing what? one might well ask. presumably not processing benefit applications!] the adenoidal recorded female voice goes on to tell the caller he or she is in a queue and that their call will be answered when a member of staff becomes available [surely - "evolves"?] then, in a gesture of humanity i personally find deeply moving - almost as if the speaker feels guilty about the futility of holding on - the voice in the message confides that you might after all, be better off ‘ringing back later’.
at this point the more resolute among callers may take a firmer grip on the handset and resolve to sit it out. perhaps the bastards will crack before you do? but the benefits unit has one last sharpened stick to slide under the fingernails, one final tweak of the nipples to inflict. for after the recorded message finishes, you have to suffer a series of horrible creaking groaning sounds - like those you get when polystyrene is twisted - followed by a rattling thunk. yes! our informative recording artiste has been far too baffled by the technology at her disposal to cope with the concept of pressing the ‘stop‘ button when she’s finished recording her message. so the harried listener is forced to endure the sound effects produced by her laboriously placing the handset back on its cradle. and - judging from the length and variety of noises produced, doing so whilst wearing a strait-jacket and quite possibly boxing gloves.
take into consideration the fact that this message is on a loop which repeats at approximately 30 second intervals and i defy even the deafest and most stubborn enquirer to hold for more than a couple of minutes before throwing the phone through the fuckin’ window and promising themselves they’ll ‘ring back tomorrow’.
and what pray, has brought all this to a head. well, i started my own business [madra.net] at the end of december last year. from my cashflow forecasts, i knew that i’d be pretty strapped for cash for the first 6 months or so. in the multimedia business [like many others] it’s not uncommon to finish a job and not see the colour of the client’s money for up to two months. so in anticipation of this ‘cashflow crisis’ i put in an application for housing benefit in the middle of december, a week before i started the company. a couple of weeks ago, i still hadn’t heard so much as a grunt or the scraping of knuckles on the ground from the benefits unit. relations with my landlord were getting a bit fraught, so i had to bite the bullet and reach for the phone…
after two days, i eventually got through and spoke to one of the female inmates who cheerily informed me that my claim was in the “urgent tray” and would be processed within 7 days - 14 at the absolute most! well, dear reader. that 14 days was up yesterday. so tomorrow i am once again going to have to suffer trial by telecommunications equipment. as i steel myself for the ordeal ahead, i try to count my blessings. it may have taken almost 5 months so far, but at least my claim for housing benefit is in manchester city council’s “urgent tray”. presumably claims in the “non-urgent tray” are not so speedily dealt with!
