A redundant - part one

Straight out of administration and into the arms of the dole queue. Funny thing is, it's not even a queue these days. You do have to queue a bit but once that's done it gets a good deal more sophisticated. Theres a bouncer. He scowls a lot, takes down your details, yanks your forms from your hand and passes the baton to his colleague - a flat-chested, stern-faced old crow, selected specially for her lack of humanity. Having treated you to a few moments of resolve-sapping questioning (the first of many to come) you are sent to check the answers you've already given on the telephone - so as to undermine your confidence. Sensing that I might be a tough pleb to crack, stern-faced flat chest makes me check my form on a window sill above a radiator - as if to demonstrate the sort of ludicrous bobbins she can make me do to earn my £47 allowance.

Determind not to be beaten, I completed the check in record time - paying particuarly scant attention to the sections of legal importance - and handed my papers back. Stern-faced flat chest chooses my moment of vague success to strike her next precision blow, 'can I have the pen back please?' she chides before I've had time to withdraw my hand. I utter something unintelligable, taken aback by this cruel tactic, and then go to hand her my passport by mistake, 'BAHAHAHAHA,' she bellows triumphantly, nudging her brutish sidekick into life to share the joke, 'you can keep THAT! I'll take the pen though,' and before I have time to mumble appreciatively, I'm on my way again, to the next stage of my de-pantsing.

Now in the middle of the office, I'm ushered to a line of about five chairs where two of my fellow moops are waiting. There is a distinct stench of unemployment (in this case sweat and skunk) and my comrades cower - still weak from the handy work of stern face - clutching their papers nervously. I take my place at the end of the line and survey my surroundings. There are two types of people in the job centre's next line of defense:

1. Emotionless, orange women with precision-straightened hair and joyless smatterings of jewellery (probably issued to them as they come to work), who pace through the questioning with the detatched air and business-like misery of an experienced prostitute.
2. Disconcertingly cheery middle-aged men, who treat the whole thing a little too optimistically - as though secretly planning a sudden and unexpected stabbing. They greet their appointments with inappropriately flashy pointing routines lifted straight from American films about Dads coaching their sons' baseball teams. They make me sick.

Before too long I am summoned. Thankfully, my interviewer seems to have been drafted in from a stock cupboard somewhere at the last minute and conforms to neither of the above categories. She is a bedraggled old coot, with a mysterious sweat patch on her right shoulder, as though wearing her armpits inside out. I have little trouble explaining my situation and although she has 'studied my file' she finds no problem with any of my answers, moving straight on to the important stuff:

• Almost everything I do or don't do from now on might effect my claim.
• I am expected to go to any lengths to find work, this includes travelling for 2 hours, heavy lifting and, if required of me, killing a man. I nod in agreement.
• I am to return once a fortnight, giving me ample opportunity to joust with stern face some more.
• I had better buck my ideas up.

And that's it. Less than an hour out of my arduous daily routine (of sitting in front of the computer, writing balls about nothing) and I can expect my 'wage' within three working days. God bless you stern-faced flat chest, I'll be seeing you soon.