So, I finally stepped down off my personal moral pedestal about accepting financial help from government institutions and filed for unemployment about 10 days ago. Ish. Shudder.
Right. So, I'm minding my own business after sending someone, somewhere, a government-y form, and telling my work ethic bloody independent minded "we take care of our own" streak to shut up and pass the Top Ramen, when I get back an answer, of a sort.
Oh, yeah, sure, of a sort. I get four, count 'em four (4) things, documents, packets, forms, whatever, in the mail from wherever these things come from within the great State of California.
In Spanish.
You read that right. Spanish. Which amused me rather at the time, because I know a lot of Latin from being a scientist and just interested in languages, and I can recognize a few things in Spanish. But it's not like I know it or anything, and it is most certain I can't read Bureaucratese in what is to me an unknown tongue. I admit to an edge of irritation too, at having to figure out who to call in order to rectify the situation. But this, all this, I set aside to fly to San Diego for a hopefully-unemployment-negating encounter.
I find now that one of these linguistically inpenetrable documents included a message telling me to expect a followup call today, which of course, fell on deaf ears [blind eyeballs? whatever], to inquire about a couple of my answers to the initial form I filled out.
I remain blissfully ignorant until the phone rings this morning and I answer, all of which goes something like this:
irritating[*] cell phone ring
me, fumbling with CD player to pause music
me, dashing for cell phone on windowsill, pushing button with my little pink paw and saying, "Hello?"
SOMETHINGSOMETHINGtoofasttohearSOMETHINGSIDRA VITALE?
This is Sidra
Hi, I'm calling from [something EDD department] regarding your interview today.
Huh?
That was me, the witty one.
And, of course, this is how I find out to expect a phone interview with someone from the EDD, today. The subject of which was actually pretty innocuous, so now that I reflect back on it, I'm kind of glad I didn't know to expect it. 'Cause then I would have just worried.
We get things straightened out regarding my need for documents in a language I actually know, and this lady [whose name was apparently transmitted during the intial blast of incomprehensiblity at the beginning of our call] asks me the questions she called to ask, and explained a few things, but only after chastising me for "waiting so long to return my something-something form". To which I very politely did not answer "bite me", but instead explained the minor issue of a language barrier and that I had been out of town chasing down a job, while my voice said, all on its own I assure you, a matter of tone and timbre I had nothing to do with, "back off, strange woman calling me on Saturday morning to talk too fast while I'm trying to listen to Itzhak Perlman play Mozart". I mean, really, with that in the player, be glad I picked up the phone at all. If it had been Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, I would not have bothered.
Anyway. I'm supposed to get new forms sometime soon...and I will oh-so-solemnly immolate the little bits of dead trees if they arrive in Vietnamese.
The moral of my story? Oh, there isn't one, don't worry about it. Except maybe to study more foreign languages, kids!
[*] All cell phones have irritating rings. But, you knew that already.
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