The Earlobe of the Beast

I didn't do shit yesterday but burn the day down.

To the mother- fucking ground.
I just burned it down. I didn't give a fuck, but I see that I was pissed. Pissed about the fact that Social Services could/would waste human life so blithely. If you took the time from every person there, daily, and then multiply that by monthly, you would have millions of man hours. Doesn't New York realize that that time is money?? Give these people jobs working high up in Civil Service, jobs that they would 'like' to go into in the morning. Kick out some of these no account Civil Servants and do the head, body replacement thing and you've got a fucking solution!!

Hobobob, you're talking about slashing pay. The Unions would not go for such a thing. There'll be a revolt in the Post Office, or whatever department that you would be gutting out. You're insane if you think that something like that would work.

Well BUILD a department, and put these people, put us, in it in managerial positions, self managing THE department and then have this new department help remove the caseload from other departments, say Social Services? Hey! Hey! Hey! Hobobob, you might have something there if YOU WERE NOT ON DRUGS!! Again, these people will realize that they are doing the same work for demonstrably less pay and you'll have another riot.

Well then, look at it this way, with these man hours, you can fucking grow a child into a teenager. I'm sorry, SEVERAL children into teenagers. On the manpower that Social Services wastes every fucking day. Social Services is in itself a waste producing department that has to go. It really does, because it does nothing. It's clunky, inefficient and does not/can not respond to the NEEDS of the people that it's supposed to be serving. Instead, all it can do is corral people and drag them wholesale through this room and that room with cavernous openings in the floor, for a number to fall through...hopefully, and the few who survive, into a job farm sweeping the streets.

That's how it works folks. Sorry to tell you. There are no happy endings here. Most of these people find jobs on their own, and the bad news is that they STILL have to fight with Social Services.

Well. I have this meeting to go to in the morning, so I retire early. Early to bed, early to rise shit. Right. The meeting is at Eight O'clock, so, normally waking up at Five-Five Thirty, this should be a walk in the park. The sun is streaming though the window when I wake up. I don't move because the sun is barely up at Five Thirty in the morning. I roll over onto my back so that I can see the clock on the microwave. Time now: Nine AM. The floor came crashing down on me from above. I missed the fucking appointment. Can you believe that shit? I slept straight through my appointment with WECare.

Then it dawned on me. Those fuckers would have probably have me in a pen with a bunch of other grunting pigs for that entire hour. Fuck 'em. I'll go in whenever I fucking pleased. I've already shit in my pants. Why not wear them proudly? Right? I get ready at my on speed, as if I wasn't already terribly late. Making sure that I had all of my paperwork. And started to leave the building, but ran into Snow White on my way out. She stops me. "How is it going Hobobob?" Good, Snowy Baby. I'm fucking ass deep late for an appointment that might cost me my fucking SRO. Other than that, I'm doing great. I didn't say it just like that, but kinda like that. She hooks a thumb over her shoulder. "Stop by and get lunch." Now that's a great idea. I go into the cafeteria, to the walk up window and ask for lunch, whereupon I receive a bag lunch. As if I was going to school. Sandwich, bottled water, tangerine, bag o' chips, napkins. I was good to go. Skipping out of the building like a ten year old going to school, I head to WECare.

WECare is a pretty assed, brand newly renovated building in a nice residential block of brown- stones on the West Side of Manhattan. There are beautiful trees lining the streets. It's just downright pretty. I walk into a new age office. Clean, pristine, orderly. You would think you were walking into a corporate building going on a job interview. Was I intimidated? No. It was stern, but also comfortable. Like in a doctor's office. I walk up to this wide front desk with three women answering phones. Now get this, I get in about Ten O'clock and tell them that I'm late for a Nine O'clock appointment. Yeah, I'm trying to pull a slick one on them.

Not even phased, they collect my paperwork and tell me to have a seat. Just like that. All of that possible catastro- phizing...for what? For Nothing. Flanking the front door, on both sides, are actually two waiting rooms filled with chairs. The usual mainstay of Social Services. Security guards and lots and lots of chairs. Inside the waiting room on the left are more flat screen monitors. But instead of playing CNN. These are playing HANDCOCK. I sit down and watch the show. I love that movie.

Soon, my name is called along with twelve others and we are taken, waddling like penguins, into another room. An Orientation room, where we take more seats. We are handed paperwork. Realize this. When you deal with Social Services....get your ass a big file cabinet. A real big fucking file cabinet, because you are going to fall into a immense paper chase. Where the amount of paper is only there to confuse you with useless information about the procedures and origins of WECare. Their mission statement, how they integrate into the Social Service system as private contractors. So on and so forth. SHIT YOU ABOSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED TO KNOW!! It should be available upon request, yes, but it's not why you are here.

Then, back out into the mail waiting rooms. I find a seat in the room on the left and take a seat, and it's here that I realize that this is the same Civil Servant set up as in the Mines of Moria. Just with a pretty face on it. A nice, professional, clean, renovated face over the same shit as in Brooklyn. But you want to know something. It's a bunch of bullshit waiting, yes, and corralling and being treated like so much cattle, but I appreciate the chairs, and the environment. It's not in some slate-gray and lifeless building in some ghetto part of town. I appreciate that I can sit and watch a movie or two, or read a book in peace, without being on my feet, on an idiotic line. I appreciate this.

More than some of these fucking goons. Even here, they are complaining about the wait, although the people here at WECare have already stated that the wait is about four hours, so be prepared. But do these social throwbacks appreciate it?? No, a number are still bitching and moaning in their nice comfortable chairs, in a nice comfortable waiting room. These fucking morons. Whatever, with all of this information, I'm ready for my trek through WECare. And it's a trek that I've done before, so I expect NO surprises. And none are given. I am called after about a forty five minute wait into a room with the social worker, where I'm hit with a barrage of questions. The social worker is a human robot, that speaks with absolutely no tonal inflection, and types with amazing flourish. In something like twenty minutes she has asked me over a hundred questions and sends me back to the waiting room. We have no chit chat. There is no stopping to ask me my day. Not even a moment to breathe. My social worker, or this entry into the world of WECare, is just information gathering. Just that. And this worker literally sucked it out of me.

An hours wait later I am invited into another room where a nurse gives me an eye test, checks my weight, which is 220.6 lbs....

Waitaminute. 220.6 lbs? I haven't been weighted by my physician because I missed my appointment for two weeks straight. So I didn't know how much weight that I've lost since January. In January I weighed 334.6. Sonofabitch!! I had lost 14 lbs in a little over a month and a half. I went through the rest of my exam sleepwalking. I got an EKG and blood taken.

About another hour finds me in a room with a stern Asian female Doctor, who looks like the Wiched Witch of the West, except she is wearing spectacles...not glasses, but spectacles. Old crone glasses although she was no doubt my age. The second I had a little problem with the questions that she was asking me, her head started spinning over her shoulders like a flashing signal/siren. "MR HOBOBOB," she says tersely, "You said that you have chest pain and chest pressure. WHERE are your pain??" Look lady, I didn't say that. "That's not what the social worker typed down here." I frown, I'm confused. Are they getting something messed up here? "MR. HOBOBOB, look, I can't read yo mind. Now do you or do you not have chest pain?" No lady, I don't have chest pain. Chest pressure, yeah, when I have a panic attack, but no chest pain. "Lay down on the table there." I lay down on the table but she doesn't get up for shit. At no time does she leave the seat and computer monitor. "Where is your chest pain?!" LOOK! Lady, I don't have any chest pain. She huffs, returns to her computer. Then comes back with: "When you were hit in the face with a lead pipe...."

WTF?? You gotta be fucking shitting me. I turn to her. You've got something wrong there lady. You're reading the wrong person. She stops, actually LOOKS at her screen this time, moves her mouse around a bit and then, after regaining her composure, asks in measured tones: "You have the gout." YES. "No chest pain." RIGHT. "High Blood Pressure." YOU got it right now lady. Without one apology, she goes through the rest of her review. I don't call it an examination because in an examination the doctor works your body over, as if he/she was a chiropractor. This woman never touched me. Basically, of all the people that I ran into here, this: Tall, Dark Haired, skinny Asian Chick in her forties with glasses, and if I had her name I would use IT to describe her too, was a bitch full of fucking shit. Of a not so bad an experience overall, she singlehandedly made it worse than it needed to be.

After this fucked up Doctor. I sat in the waiting room, watching The Incredible Hulk...a pretty good movie. When, after several minutes, another woman walks through with a clipboard asking us to sign it and how many people did we see today. I wrote down three. The reason...they had lost track of people and wanted to make sure that everyone was being taken care of, or about to be seen by someone. Three must have been the lucky number, because they called me into another room, told me when my appointment dates were and pointed to the door. Goodbye to you motherfuckers too, baby.

I was done. Exactly four and a half hours later.

I head home. Not as exasperated as coming from the Mines of Moria. This was not that bad at all.
I'll blog this

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