Ah. The cultural milieu of the Department of Human Assistance. It sounds like a 1984 term but with a 2020s politically correct twist with the wrong meaning. I gone done picked up my welfare check at the Department of Human Assistance today. It really seems like I ought to be going to the Department of Health and Human Services for this kind of stuff. Like welfare and other temporary assistance to needy families is the sort of thing I would expect to find at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Department of Human Assistance? I feel like such a loser. This is like where one is relegated to when one can’t successfully navigate the bot queue of Artificial Intelligence life (hence I call it a PC term from the 20’s and not the 90’s). Human Assistance. Pshh. “Human” (read old school, traditional) assistance for those low lifes who need a leg up. Like a physical leg up. The bot can’t do your heavy lifting for you (unless you work in a warehouse) so come to the Department of Human Assistance where a real human worker can help you out, since you didn’t manage to make it through our tortuous, automated phone queue.
Such irony. People on the lower income rungs of society spend all day here, waiting for human assistance to help overcome administrative roadblocks and hurdles that belie them. You can sit hhhoursss here waiting for your number to pop up before you get attended to. It’s like playing bingo.
Ding, ding! Your number’s been called. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Now I got food stamps to buy that chicken dinner tonight!
This place wasn’t miserable at all. It was just totally unproductive time. As such, I had nothing else to do but compose this blog as I sat waiting for my number.
I turned this unproductive time into a high quality post (I hope you’ll agree). The thing is, I wonder how unproductive other people were rendered by sitting here, waiting for a Human to assist them. People come here because they are at the bottom of the economic tier and need these government benefits.
But someone’s just sat four hours waiting to be called. Giving them the least benefit of the doubt, they probably skipped out on their minimum wage job to be here in line. They could have made $60 hours in that time if they were at work. The point of the Department of Health and Human Services is to provide services for healthy and well-being humans. But the Department of Human Assistance only gets in the way of that process and takes an applicant out of their productive working time.
Instead, stuck in this Human Assistance depot, I’m not making any money. Worse, being here increases the opportunity cost minute by minute and deprives me of the potential to make any money. Heck, in the time I or anyone else spent sitting here, I could have stood a better chance of making money by walking across the street into the bingo parlour! At least there I could’ve been playing five cards at once with the chance to win big!, instead of waiting on a single ticket here in serial fashion behind a hundred other people.
Come to think of it, I am going to check out the bingo parlour.1 If the government wants to improve the lot of people’s lives, they need to hire more workers to process these people faster. Get them out on their feet faster, getting them back out doing the jobs or whatever things they can and need to be doing.
_____________________
I walked out and saw my mangled bike. Was that my mangled bike? Something was missing. It was sitting on it’s knee, like it was missing a tire.
It was missing a tire.
It was missing a front tire.
Damn, someone stole my tire. I looked up to survey the rest of the damage. At least I still have my frame. I can always get a new tire and ride again. Wait…
Did they steal my seat? I have a pretty fancy bike and I just bought a new seat. I hope they didn’t steal my seat. I looked up.
Nope. Seat still there. All good. I’ll just have to buy a new wheel and tire.
The cops were useless. When I walked into the building the two sheriffs were there in the front lobby leaning against the counter. One of them was showing his partner some video on his cell phone and they were laughing. Useless. One of them should be outside. But at least there’s two of them to deter any disgruntled applicants from jumping them, what with their frustrations in waiting only to be denied benefits and all. So at least there’s two sherriffs.
Well shoot son, the guy just done stole the wheel of my bike. I walked back inside to inform the sheriff. He came back out to inspect the damage. He said that’s the problem with the quick release tires. But why the heck weren’t you doing your job? Why weren’t you out patrolling the grounds?
Another sheriff came outside to see what the issue was and I told him someone stole the wheel off my bike. This other sheriff knew his job and quickly went back inside to check the cameras. A minute later he came back out. The sheriff said someone walked down the line of bike racks (which was right beside the front entrance to the building) and popped my tire off in five seconds and was gone.
As I was talking to the sheriff another man walked past me toward the opposite end of the bike rack. Then he stopped in his tracks. He looked around, dumbfounded.
“Someone just stole my seat.”
Ah. So that’s why I still have a seat. The perp stole my wheel and then took a seat from the other guy. Funny thing was, the other guy didn’t even lock his bicycle up.
“Damn, I just got this bike. A friend gave it to me too.”
I felt bad for him.
“Well at least you can still pedal home, standing.”
“Yea, that’s true. Damn. I know who it was too. Big, fat white guy. I saw him pacing back forth. That’s why I was in the foyer; keepin’ my eye on him.” He said foyer really classy like. Foi -yay. Way better than I could say it. Not foy-yer like other uncouth Americans. “Damnit. I shoulda stood out here. I knew he looked shady.”
We both commiserated for a bit and then he rode off into the sunset as it was getting dark. I called my daddy to come pick me up like some 4th grader who’s bike had just gotten stolen.
People often wonder if my stories are true. You be the judge.
Goodbye.
If you would like to help me requisition a new tire or just like my writing in general, would you consider donating funds?
“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Philippians 4:11-13
When I was a kid my parent’s would always ask if I wanted to play bingo, and I would excitedly say “Yes!” Only to be disappointed by eating boiled noodles and other steamed food at the Chinese restaurant. Growing up, one of the few Chinese restaurants in town was next to a bingo parlour. Transliterating “play bingo” from Chinese to English sounds like “da bino” AKA “play bingo.” So I was always fooled when every time we came so tantalizingly close to the bingo parlour, parked right in front of it!, only to walk past the front door and over to the Chinese restaurant. It would be years before I realized that “da bino” is the term for cooking/boiling your own food in a communal hot pot of broth, and not the veritable bingo I desired.