As many of you know, I became unemployed when Xerox decided to cut about 3,000 employees in mid-October. I waited patiently for my severance check to arrive and then did what many Americans do, file for unemployment.  What unfolded next was a tedious process of registering with the department. NYS requires you to call in and spend about 15 minutes filling out your personal info and answering a ton of questions relating to how you were unemployed, how long you worked at your previous job and others. No big deal, it is necessary to get you into the system. But wait, you then must speak to a live person to confirm your info before you can proceed. Here in lies the issue. You can’t get through to a live person, nor can you be put on hold and wait (I was willing to do this).

After about thirty tries a day, over two weeks of getting the same message, “Due to high call volume, no one is available at this time, please call back this week”, and then it just hangs up. There is no other option. The next week, I tried again and got the same results. The recording acknowledges my info is in the system, but there is no live associate to complete the process. 

So, I turned to the only person I knew could help, Corey B. He got involved with an email to someone with the ability to move this forward. Five days later, low and behold, I got a call from a live person who proceeded to take more info, gave me a website to use as well as set up my security question, Mother's Maiden Name. All I needed to do was to go online and set up a direct deposit account and start calling in the next week. Easy? Nope. After many attempts to log on, the security answer did not match. I tried changing the spelling, but to no avail. I had to log in multiple times as it will time out if you keep entering in the wrong info. Another email to my trusty contact from Corey and another person finally called me back and was able to see that the first person spelled the maiden name wrong in a way I couldn’t believe. So that was now cleared up. My honesty with the department stating I had a 12-week severance package, pushed my benefit ability to Jan 4th. So, after all of this and several weeks of trying, I likely won’t need this benefit if I secure a job by then. Thanks to Corey's Clout (Fred K title), I am not still calling in for a live person.