Catching up is hard to do

No job, yet, but that doesn’t mean life hasn’t been full of fun and excitement on the job-search trail.

Well, that depends a lot on your definition of “fun and excitement.”

Perhaps the highlight of the last 10 days was getting to go into the local One-Stop to be the customer instead of the counselor. While I was at One-Stop, I would do somewhere between six and 10 of these meetings a week.

But in this case, I was on the other side of the table. I know a couple of people at the other office, including a former boss. But I drew someone I had never met, who was very polite and really prepared for the meeting.

The interviewer was a little thrown when I told her what I had been doing prior to my layoff, and she offered to just give me the information packet.

But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, so we went over it. It was very similar to what we’d been doing, which made me feel pretty good.  I didn’t really learn anything new, but it’s comforting to know there’s a place I can go and call if I need help.

The other part of this story is that the New York State Department of Labor gets a tip of the hat from “Working” Press.

One of the other common tasks I dealt with at the old job was helping people who were not getting their Unemployment Insurance. This could be pretty hard at times, because as is the case in many large state and commercial organizations, it’s tough to get a real person on the phone. (It got easier when we as counselors got a special number we could call and put the customers on the line with someone).

But I haven’t needed that. The system has worked exactly as it is supposed to. I signed up, did my waiting period and certified once a week. As I check the DoL web site, I can see that the money is indeed coming into my bank account. I do love direct deposit. (The other choice is a bank card).

For what it’s worth, I do get just over half of what I made when I was working. Right now, because of the severance package, I have actually made a little more in February than I would have if I had been working.

That’s not going to last after this week or so. Time to get back to the search.