Yesterday was another visit to the job centre. It has become routine now, walk through the door, hand your cellophane wrapped booklet to the man leading to the doors upstairs, go to the first floor, hand booklet to another man, go to zone C, wait for your name to be called.
Except not anymore. For reasons I can only assume have been shown to increase the efficiency of the practice/staff the job centre has made some minor changes to the process.
1. Instead of just going to the door and handing the booklet, you now have to queue at the front desk with anyone else with a general enquiry so you can be handed a small yellow card, which must be handed in to allow you access to upstairs.
2. Zones A-D are now Zones 1-4. Zones 3-4 have moved upstairs. This took me a while to figure out as I sat in my usual place since no-one had informed me. I waited 10 minutes for my appointment till someone called my name only to send me upstairs.
3. Zones 1-2 are for 25+, Zones 3-4 are for 16-24. This I suppose is to counter the growing number of unemployed young individuals. Ridiculously however people were clearly ending up in the wrong place. Despite the apparent obvious difference the people at the door were not informing them. This led me to be sitting upstairs across from a young guy with two children and a man with a long grey beard. Which one seems the odd one out? Surely the man at the door could have told him he was in the wrong place, thus saving him time. Instead it took until his name was called for him to be told he was on the wrong floor.
Overall the experience took 10 minutes longer than it used to. There is an oft used saying which might need to applied here: Don't fix it if it isn't broken!
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