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[Robin Tetley]

A friend of mine has recently had to sign on after being made redundant. She's certainly from a professional background and her experience of the job centre was that they were quite unequipped to deal with people with her background. That is trained professionals. Has anybody else had good or bad experiences of a job centre recently? How do you think they are doing with the whole credit crunch / recession / rising unemployment figures?

[Bob]

Though I haven't stepped foot in a Job Centre for a few years a friend of mine is on the dole at the moment. It's not especially a recession issue because he's been unemployed for over nine months now. His experience is that they expect him to turn up at a specific time and they never can see him at that time and they seem to want him to tick a certain amount of looking for work boxes when not offering any great support. That's him though.

[Robin Tetley]

My past experience of Job Centres was always pretty good. Sure you have to jump through a few hoops which may or may not have any genuine relevance to ones job search but still, they are helpful people I've found.

[Bob]

Ultimately I can't fairly comment because I only know what a mate says. He thinks it's very bureaucratic but who knows? Everybody has a job to do.

[Robin Tetley]

Except the people in the job centre looking for work but I know what you mean. Like I said they're pretty good and helpful people in my experience. You always get the odd one that treats you as if you're actively NOT seeking work but that's to be expected perhaps.

[ktweeden]

In my experience of the Job Center, they don't seem to realistically expect people to be looking for jobs. When I listed the things I'd done to find a job they always seemed surprised. I also found that they didn't really give me any advice, they just pointed me in the direction of the job center plus website.
I know that in my are there have been a lot of jobs on offer in the center itself, which suggests there are more people unemployed than their staff can physically deal with.

[Robin Tetley]

I'd agree with this somewhat. In my experience there were always a few "staffers" who's attitude seemed to be that I was out to scrounge from the system and they were going to catch me out. A bit like when a journalist interviews an MP. You're on the take and I'm going to prove it. I had a few run ins with people in the Job Centre who were very rude. One of whom was a deaf lady. How conflicted I felt telling somebody with a disability that they were rude and unpleasant. Of course that's fine everybody can be rude and unpleasant but I felt I was in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was a real Larry David moment.

[ktweeden]

Do you think that they're like that because the majority of people they deal with are just taking the benefit without ever looking for a job? I think that is probably the case where I live. Not that this really excuses rudeness.

[Robin Tetley]

I think there's a fine line. It may well be what you say I'm sure there are many people that just don't want a job but to treat everybody the same is bad. Like you say, no excuse for rudeness.

I'd say they need to treat everybody as though they are honestly trying their very best to find a job and if a "client" isn't then the attitude of the "advisor" will shine a light on that.

I hope this makes sense.

[Bob]

If they are a customer service based operation these days and call people on the dole "clients" then there's no excuse for treating people like they are milking the system whether they are or not.

[Robin Tetley]

I pretty much agree. Clients seems a very almost "New Labour" word. Very professional. Very orderly. So yes, if you are going to refer to the customers as this they should also be treated with respect. Even the "dodgy" ones.

[Bob]

At the end of the day we don't know how the are trained. Maybe certain people are "old school" or maybe they've been told to be a bit suspicious and not just accept at face value what they are told?

[Robin Tetley]

I'm sure this is a grey area. I can't see them being trained to be suspicious - I could be wrong of course - I'm just thinking out loud really. Perhaps these things are at the staff members "discretion"?

[Bob]

I'd quite like to know the answer to this. I suppose it would be impossible to find out unless anybody here actually knows someone who works or has worked within the Job Centre.

[Robin Tetley]

I don't. A man who works in the office near me seems to get on the same buses as me occasionally but I wont be asking.