And so I begin day two of my unemployment journey in the California Republic. One of my first steps at finding somewhat a locus of control on myself and situation has been to contact the State of California Emplopyment Development Department, in hopes of filing for some sort of unemployment insurance payments, until I secure regular employment again. Monday I racked up 86 call attempts, shut down in the phone cue, hung up automatically on because of number of callers. The system is too overloaded to even place callers in a cue. The irony of this, of course, costs this heavily in debt state even more pain to the tune of billions of dollars for just the failed calls.

1.800.300.5616

Today, I rose at 7:55am to being calling a toll free number for EDD’s 8:00am opening bell. Callers will hear one of two basic messages. One with a light-tonal female voice, telling you straight up that “…due to the call volume, we are unable to take your call at this time.” She then launches into a special note about the Obama legislation and stimulus money. This is the voice you don’t want to hear, as it is the voice of no hope, despite the promise of “extended benefits due to the Obama legislation.” At this point, you should immediately hang up, redial, and hope to get the second voice, otherwise you will be hung up on at the end of this public service announcement.

The second voice is a darker female voice that launches into an actual phone tree process, giving you options to press, based on your previous employment status, such as veteran clasification, federal/state employee classification, or previous states worked in the past 18 months (which is why I was unable to utilize the online option, and needed to make the call in the first place).

At this point, it may behoove you to have memorized your particular touch tones, and enter them rapidly as possible after hearing her come on the line, in order to maximize your time and attempts at getting through. I found there is no need to pause for each segment’s message playback. As long as you don’t “slur” the tones, just press away…

After you enter your codes, you still face the potential for a similar “too many, thanks for playing” or you will get the golden ticket to a true wait time, placing you in a cue to talk to an operator.

Around 8:04am, I actually did get through, but was so excited, I hung up. So, for the next 41 minutes, I racked up another 121 call attempts. On the 122 call attempt, at 8:45am, I had a blessing of success, made it through the fray, and was placed into the cue.

After a 17 minute elatively painless call and a hearty, yet direct grandfatherly “good luck!” from my operator, I was assured that I was all registered, and my assistance would be on its way in the next couple of weeks.  As my fortune cookie said, what a most delightful journey! Interesting times, indeed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 1:50 pm and is filed under political view. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.