Adventures at the "Welfare" office Part II

All the paperwork has been filled out. A complete history of my schooling, not much there anyway, work history and all the necessary documentation requested to ascertain my qualifications for food assistance. Of course today Sydney my 9 yr old wakes up sick, so that means I can't take her to school, instead I got to drag her with me to social services for orientation class and the interview. Poor kid, on second thought it's good for her, she gets to see what it takes sometimes to provide for a family.

It's 10:00 and my first visit is in half an hour. I must attend an orientation of the program. Which basically means I sit in front of a TV and watch a VHS tape that that keeps bouncing around and rolling up the screen explaining all the responsibilities I have if I receive assistance and the hefty penalties, such as fines and jail time if I fail to live up to my responsibilities. So if I move, get pregnant, get a job, lose a job, someone moves in or out of my home, receive money of any kind, a change in my income in any amount or die, I have 10 days to report it to the Health and Human Services agency or my benefits will be terminated and I'll go to jail. Wonder if they'll hit up my surviving family members for money if I forget to tell them I'm dead? Thankfully only half an hour later I have my orientation paper signed and verified that I have attended this class and now I'm out of the office and headed home to wait for my next appointment at 2:30.

Thankfully my mother has kindly volunteered to watch Sydney for me so I won't have to torment her with the long afternoon in the welfare office. 2:00 rolls around and I head down to the offices again to hunt for a parking space, walk 4 blocks, wait in another long line to tell the worker I've arrived for my interrogation er.. appointment, sit on the hard steel benches for an hour while I watch the snot nose children step on my feet as they run around the room chasing each other with cold hot dogs and Pb&j sandwiches.

Funny thing, as I sit waiting, the woman who had been sitting next to me on Friday walked into the waiting room and sat next to me. She too had her stack of paperwork all filled out and ready to be interrogated. She was quite chatty, telling me about raising her daughter on her own, she was now in her senior year of high school and dating and blah blah blah... Poor woman tho, stress from loosing her job caused her to break out in these terrible hives all over her body she was in tremendous pain and needed health care, which is of course why she was there. Finlay her name was called and as she gathered all her belongings and headed toward the interview rooms, she turned and smiled at me and said, "Good Luck!" Another 20 minutes passed by and there it was "Zunny Zaiada, invew rum thateen"

Walked down the long hallway looking for room 13. I entered the room with my life story in my arms. There were two mauve metal chairs with unidentifiable stains on them sitting in front of floor to ceiling 6" thick plexiglass that had that little handy slot at the counter to slide paperwork through. Behind the glass sat a tall thin Asian man in his... well who knows for sure, he looked 30 but was probably 45. He smiled at me kindly and started in on pleasantries, "How are you today?, Long wait?" "Well, lets see here, you already have a case open is that correct?" "Yes, for MediCal." "Have you ever applied for Food Stamps before?" "Yes" "But not now?" "No, the stopped them because I moved in with my parents." "Okay..., We got to be very careful, I don't want to mess up you MediCal."

Ten minutes became twenty then thirty then... After many questions and many papers being slid back and forth between the plexiglass, copies of copies, signatures on this X, initials, "here, here, here, AND here." My fingerprint on this page, a pin number punched into that machine, Mr. Kim pulled out his calculator and added up all the figures, referred to his giant black binder with all the qualification points and with a look of both surprise and disappointment said, "Oh...uhmmm.. Well, it looks like you... Well, let me check this again. I have to be careful not to change things so that you don't lose you MediCal. I think I better check with my supervisor." Mr. Kim then walked out of the room.

"What! What is it!", I thought. That's it I'm going to jail right now, he's going to get security and they're going to hall me off to the slammer. I must have made some mistake in the paperwork and now I'm guilty of fraud. That's it I'm done for. I can see it now, poor Sydney crying as I sit on the other side of 6" plexiglass trying to touch her little hand pressed up against it saying "Mommy, when are you coming home, I miss our cuddle time?" And Silas asking, "So is the food good? You have to make license plates?"

Mr. Kim returned. "Okay, Sunny, well it looks like, well, I had to check with my supervisor because the last worker made a mistake and we fix that and you still get MediCal but you see you make too much money. You over the limit by seventeen dolla."

Seventeen dollars? SEVENTEEN DOLLARS? I MAKE SEVENTEEN DOLLARS TOO MUCH! ... HA HA HA HA HA! That's hilarious.

Poor Mr. Kim kept apologizing and saying how bad he felt and that he should have added it all up first and then I wouldn't have had to wait, and that even if it was a dollar over there would be nothing he could do.

So I packed up my life in paperwork, thanked Mr. Kim and headed down the long hallway into the waiting room through the security check and metal detector down the 4 blocks to my car where I laughed my head off and thought. This should make for an interesting blog.

Three days later I received a notice in the mail making the official statement that my application for food stamps was denied for the maximum income allowed for a household of my size was exceeded by SEVENTEEN DOLLARS. Oh well, I'll stock up on Cup Noodles and buy Halloween Candy the day after for 75% off. This family won't go hungry.