UI follies

Tried to apply for unemployment. The office opens at 7:45 AM. Called at 8.

After sitting through the obligatory "press 1 for English" and "press 1 to file a claim" messages, I got a two minute message telling me why I have to give my SSN. Then, and only then, I was allowed to type in the SSN, and verify they got it right.

Another message, telling me there's a large volume of calls today, and they would try to transfer the call. Transfer noises.

Then "There are no agents available. Call back later". Total time tying up one of their incoming lines was about six minutes.

I called back a few minutes later - after re-entering all that data, got into the wait queue. After a couple minutes, the hold blurb about how you can do all this stuff - except the reason I was calling (because they told me I had to speak to someone live!) on the Internet - was interrupted by a male voice advising me of a 22-minute minimum wait for a live agent.

I hung up and drove out to Juda to apply for a real job.