The benefit of naught

Seeing beyond the plain offer

What looks like an offer may not necessarily have a benefit, as there can be many variables at play to determine if, in the immediate term, the situation might have some credible participation. In the same terms, a bargain, attractive as it may seem, is also perverse; in that, it presents an opportunity to acquire either what you do not need or more than you need.

The utility of that acquisition is elastic, as it might give you the benefit of longer use or better facility, much as acquiring excess beyond what you need can lead to waste. The balance between the durable and the perishable is somewhat lost as consumption might be sped up or storage presages the loss of quality and usability.

Not all offers should be grabbed and taken advantage of, just as a bargain might not be of any benefit to you as it is to those offering the bargain to shift stuff or get more footfall. To paraphrase an old sales dictum, if you are not paying the going and full price of an offer or a bargain on a product, you have become part of the product.

Thought Picnic: Making days matter

Losing the snooze

Each day appears to be unstructured without the routine that demands the alarm rings in the morning. Not that when the alarm stirs you out of slumber you jump out of bed that the first sound. For some reason or the other, some sociology or psychology when into electronic alarm clock design, it is called the snooze button.

That button you press once to silence the alarm, originally for about 10 minutes, but now, there is a variable duration for which you want the snooze to last before the next alarm strain sting your eardrums into an ambulatory response. Mine is set to 7 minutes, whilst the first alarm time is set irregularly rather than to exactly the quarter points of the clock at 00, 15, 30, or 45 minutes past the hour.

Living free of it

My alarm is musical, never monotonal and I have been conditioned to knowing that the music is an alarm rather than my radio playing back an obscure classical composition of dubious provenance. Yet, in reality, my life is not as regulated by alarm clocks except in uniquely exceptional situations, I would probably be awake before the alarm goes off then wonder if there is enough time for a power nap to the time of the alarm.

When I have abused the snooze button, I would have probably preferred to have a mallet to smash the clock to smithereens, but the said clock is usually my mobile phone, as so, I would hate to be as destructive as sudden inclination might aspire me to.

Do the day well

As to what to do with the day, you need to find purpose and achievement, the direction that brings benefit. From the poem Today, by Thomas Carlyle, which I have known more as a hymn, my spirit demands, “Think wilt thou let it slip useless away.” For each that that comes, there is much to learn, formally and informally, there is a lot to understand better, there is the possibility of the creative that we rarely tap as much as should be done, for the satisfaction is rarely in any tangible reward, so we let it slide.

The mind cannot idle without function and application, we rise to deploy thought, deed, talent and resourcefulness to things that matter, to change things for the better, in person, in event, or in ideas, it could be in all those things at the same time. A day must bring a new kind of fulfilment, whether it can be measured by others is beside the point. You know that by the time the day has become part of the eternity past, you have left a mark, not to regret the one that follows on.

Working up the sick for rules sake

Not us, it’s them

What I never expected was to be caught in a ping-pong game between social security departments but that seems to be the case.

On Friday, the unemployment benefit office called to ask if I was available for work or still sick; well, whilst I am quite available for work, the fact is there is a recuperation time after chemotherapy that means I might not really be able to work at the moment and hence, I would still be on sick leave.

So, because I am on sick leave I can only apply for sickness benefit and not unemployment benefit – the letter I received the day after advised me to call in and register as sick.

Double Dutch or quits

I called the number this morning and typed in my Social Security Number which allowed me to be connected to an agent, I explained that my Dutch was not that fluent and asked if we could converse in English, she sternly refused and rained a torrent of Dutch down the phone.

As I tried to slow her down, the conversation descended into confusion and finally I said in English, I will end the conversation and get someone who speaks Dutch to help make the call – she very well understood that sentence and we stopped.

Thankfully, my other neighbour was in and I explained my situation to him regarding when I was unemployed, when I fell ill and all the other aspects of dates, registrations and their so-called rules.

Working the sick seeking work

Another call was made where I explained that I had a friend with me to help and a long conversation ensued about employment, sickness, eligibility and whatever else.

Now the technicality is because I fell ill after I became unemployed, I have to be paid out of the unemployment benefit funds rather than the sickness benefit funds – how that was confused by all the other people I have talked to about this situation escapes me.

Apparently, the unemployment funds are loath to pay up because I am registered as sick and the sickness funds are loath to pay up because I fell ill after I was unemployed.

The rules

In 24 hours, I should get another call from the unemployment benefit office where I really do not know what will happen.

Office automation is one of my areas of expertise and one would really expect that these matters have a protocol for handling the issues internally without having to bounce the system off the claimant – they have all the information.

As the conversation closed, I asked the agent how she felt about introducing the stress of keeping abreast of their system on a person who calls to register as sick – without saying it, I realised the famous Dutch cop-out for the establishment and bureaucracy, “The rules are the rules”

I just hope this ping-pong game ends with a speedy resolution rather than this passing of the buck, the situation is very clear and at the end the fault is because I did not resort welfare funds as a first option; as a last resort, the matter has become a bit more complicated.

What's for me in the welfare state?

Asking the welfare state

I finally decided to check to find out if for all the 9 years of working in the Netherlands I was entitled to any help in respect to having been out of work for so long and been ill for about the same duration of time.

Considering I had made other plans to actualise part of my real estate without much success advice I had received meant I should assess those possibilities.

Late in December, I thought my chemotherapy treatment was coming to an end so I registered as unemployed looking for work as well as for income support.

Good for work, much less for welfare

The work coach was quite helpful for the registration for the income support end was literally inscrutable, the forms on the Internet just went page after page and my knowledge of Dutch stumbled at the ambiguities of meaning, intent and context, I was getting nowhere.

Eventually, I decided to call the benefit office for all the help they could offer in filling in the forms explaining that I had been unable to effectively search for work because the chemotherapy really only gave me two weeks of utility every month.

Sadly, the strength of the chemotherapy knocked me out for more or less a week, if I could get very short term contracts for my services, maybe that can be tailored but the schemes had to be quite specific.

Forms and boxes

A meeting had been scheduled for last Friday in relation to the registration done in December and my work coach sent me a whole range of paper forms to fill in which I did to the best of my ability barring the ambiguous points.

I took copies of contracts, salary slips, hospital appointments, prospects and every other detail I could find on my situation to the meeting and we just got on with filling in the forms which we did very well without having to use the scheduled meeting for a form-filling coach.

It’s on some computer

I was surprised at the amount of information the system had on me, apart from all my employment contracts since 2002, I found that at least for part of penultimate contract and the last contract they also had the full details of what hit my bank account.

The SUWINET information system was an amazing Big Brother monitor of my financial activities, I questioned why I had to fill the forms with information they already had and could easily access by typing in my Social Security Number.

The way information is so interlinked in scary to say the least; it is on some computer somewhere and pervasively accessible to almost anyone who has authority to view it including my work coach.

We filled in all the forms, photocopied all the documents and I asked for copies of what had been recorded in the SUWINET system and the forms were sent by the internal postage network of the social security office.

Using the support system

It was quite a strange world for me, I had not visited a social security office since the early months of 1991 and like I said before, it was all the more difficult because I never learnt how that system worked because I have always been in employment and when I had breaks, I never had difficulties with those breaks.

I am however not sure of what I am really entitled to and if any claim will be backdated to some point for support and amelioration – such was the self-confidence in getting by that thinking of the safety of social security and the welfare state never really occurred to me until friends suggested I explore that area and it took some convincing to make that move.

In any case, I now have just 5 weeks to aggressively seek new employment to hopefully start work by the beginning of April at the latest, a few more meetings with creditors and medical personnel are planned – just wish me well with every good fortune.

Thanks!