Is A Sad Sack (in tears) Really Just Sweaty Balls? My Adventure At The Unemployment Office

Shabooty’s Adventure At The Unemployment Office

So, I just got back from the unemployment office and jotted down “comedic” notes while I was there (aka making fun of other people to make myself feel better), which is now this blog post. I had nothing better to do, my iPhone had no signal, so I couldn’t play with the interwebs. Trust me – if adversity creates “funny” [prose], then you are in for a treat. Note: all of this shit happened.

I get there, and wow it only takes 2 minutes to be helped by the receptionist. She asks for my name and SSN #, to have me see one of the workers. I sit down. This isn’t so bad… but I do notice a lot of chairs with butts in them. I see the person that was behind me in line, now at the receptionist. The receptionist gets his name and SSN #, but gives him a heads up which I overhear, “just so you know, there is a three hour wait.” WTF, THREE fucking hours? How long do you think it will take for me to join the boy scouts and earn the lasso knot badge?

Anyways, I am sitting down just trying to zone out of this situation until my name is called. I notice pretty much all of the fucking seats are full. I also notice this blonde white woman in the receptionist line – I am like wtf, this bitch stands out like a sore thumb amongst all of these minorities. Turns out, the bitch is a reporter for NBC4. She asks if anyone would be willing to be interviewed about the economy for the local nightly news. My disheveled ass didn’t want anything to do with that – besides, it’d be funny to goof on her – cause again, she stood out there amongst a sea of winners (sarcasm sandwich).

I notice a few things happen as soon as the white lady reporter shows up – mo foes that work there start bringing their A game. There is a TV + VHS to the left of me, and I suddenly see an informational PSA-esque (aka poorly produced) govn’t video being played out of nowhere. It’s basically an instructional/informational video for motherfuckers stuck in an unemployment office – to get tips on interviewing, finding jobs, and that sort of thing. It looked anchient – like it was made in the 80′s. I started zoning again (defense mechanism?).

I am one of those slow to warm-up dudes when it comes to my environment – so my ass was pretty much sitting tight in my chair the whole time for my name to be called. I get bitter at having no phone signal on my iphone. Useless. Sigh.

The video ends, and I see one of those RENT-A-COP motherfu*kers you always see in local government shit holes. At least the security guy at the DMV totes a gun. This guy didn’t even have cuffs. Apparently all I saw him do was – not much. He was the wannabe cop in charge of changing the VHS tape. Sigh x2.

The place was a sea of minorities and I felt like I was back in my childhood days (pre-US citizen) in Baltimore, MD at the fucking immigration office. Same wait times, natch. At least as a kid, rough housing passes the time.

Back to being “slow to warm up to my surroundings” – after two hours I realize, oh shit, the computers behind me have internet access! Why didn’t I jump on there the whole time? Typical me – I finally start browsing at THE END. I get on a computer that opens up, and I try to go to shabooty.com. It’s BLOCKED! You need a proxy to visit it, meh! I couldn’t even get on twitter, and the images on byroncrawford.com wouldn’t even load. By the time I remembered the url for tweetscoop.com, my name was called. Note – this was 3.5 HOURS LATER. Holy shit.

Now, let me talk more about the characters there. The guy in the computer terminal next to me had a frigging brown leather or suede eye-patch. There was this one white-trash looking guy, who was the token loud mouth – the out spoken one in the bunch. He let it be known he’s been waiting for a while. This is the type of mother f*cker I’d hang out with. I am usually the quiet one in the bunch, feeding off this guy’s assholeness. But guess what, this guy already had a wing man in a new bff. The guy had asked one receptionist how many people were ahead of him – she told him 23. He went off, “no way there were that many people ahead of me, that’s some bullshit, cause there weren’t 23 people there when I had arrived,” at least according to him. When a different receptionist started working the desk, he asked her the same question, (how many people were ahead of him in line). She checks and tells him eight. The guy goes off, “what the heck, I knew that other lady was bullshitting me!” His wingman – whom I’ll get to, co-signs with, “yepppers, you can’t trust women!!!” I co-co-sign with an instigating LAUGHLE! I love it when l0sers start talking shit. Now the wingman was this guy that was about 5′ tall and 5′ round. He looked like an out of work trucker – and shit was funny, he was the one guy who is standing the whole time – cause according to him, if he sits down [his fat ass] won’t be able to get up. No jokeage. This tandem of guys were pretty entertaining. Cheers to Fat Tuesday folks, cause most of the people in there were fat fucks. Oh, by the way, the loud guy, at the end of it all kept blaring out loud, that he wished the reporter was still there, cause he’d def talk to her ass now! Huzzah. This guy even got in a little spat with the RENT-A-COP. Pretty funny exchange, where the security guy told the loud mouth that some people have waited all day, and don’t complain. Great.

There was also this creepy serial killer looking guy there, too. A guy with ONE latex glove on, and a mild case of the parkinsons – or maybe just some of those alcohol withdrawal shakes. In his folder with his papers, he also busted out his bright orange handicap sticker… he said he had medical issues and kept complaining. This helped him butt in line… bumped right to the top. Sigh x3.

Another thing I noticed was the queue of folks was not moving at all – say one person per thirty minutes – UNTIL THE END OF THE DAY/latter office hours rolled around.  When the end of the day – 4:30 PM hit (I was there since after 1 pm mind you), the queue/line started FLYING. Wtf! They were getting through the line – each person every five minutes. It was sorta fishy. I guess mo foes were trying to get home.

Anyways, I saw the lady – she fixed the bullshit “block” they had on my claim, and I was out the door in 5 minutes of seeing her. Exhale.

When I get to my car, this lady parked next to me asks, “hey, do you happen to have any jumper cables?” Sigh – people can’t even go to the damn unemployment office without doing something f*cked up – like leaving their car lights on and draining their battery. I peaced out. And went and bought some beer to celebrate chillax. No Rodney King.

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Permalink Posted in: anecdote, comedy, dc, shabooty, shabooty exclusive, ventilation February 24, 2009