Are you avoiding any group activity?

Nothing formal in my case, but the regular Friday evening gathering of a few friends that I often attend won't likely be happening for a while (pretty much my only social contact normally). It's also birthday season in my family, which requires many of us to travel long distances; so a few planned family get-togethers likely won't happen.

The cloud does have one small silver-lining; a dreaded appointment at the JobCentre got cancelled.

Going into anaphylaxis on the jobcentre floor and one of security guards seriously looking like he soiled himself over the whole fiasco was enough to ensure I will never need to go to the jobcentre ever again.

I'm not sure I should admit this, given how people here feel about the DWP, but...

Part of the reason that I dread going there so much is that I had a couple of melt-downs in the same office...

...while I was working there!

It's a long time ago now, but I was massively in debt and incredibly desperate for a job at the time, and under a lot of JobCentre pressure to apply for and take the job (a lot of front-line staff are straight off the register themselves - and yes, my official job-title was the (oxy)moronic "front-line officer"). It certainly wasn't my first choice, nor well paid, but it seemed better than nothing at the time (and certainly better than a benefits sanction). I didn't exactly try too hard during the interviewing and testing process, but it turned out that I didn't really need to as the turn-over of staff is so high (I saw quite a few trainees walk out on their first day working a desk on their own while I was there). I was made a "second-call" candidate, and enough people dropped out that I was offered the job and wasn't really in a position to refuse.

You couldn't really choose a worse job for an autistic person with vaguely lefty politics (an anarchist punk at one time). Having dozens of unhappy, often argumentative people to grill every day (if  a supervisor was watching, that is!), constant crowd-babble, and absolutely pointless and ridiculous targets to hit led to one of the worst periods of burn-out I've ever experienced (I would take a pop bottle with me up to my room when I got home so that I could pee without accidentally bumping into a housemate on the way to the loo).

The melt-downs were incredibly explosive from what I could gather from my manager - screaming and throwing papers around until finally legging it from the building. Very unusual for me; I'm usually a shut-down person. I don't remember anything about them, really, besides coming-to sodden with tears in the park half-way home. My autism diagnosis was decades away yet, and according the Occupational Health shrink that they sent me to, I had a "Messiah Complex" (good luck looking that one up in the ICD-10 - and rather ironic for a life-long atheist!)

Thankfully, the union rep' was a really good egg, and after a period of working behind the scenes in the stores which didn't work out either, they let me go and made it as easy as they could for me to claim Incapacity Benefit.

I did learn one thing though. The jobsworth staff that every claimant (oops, sorry; "customer") dreads seeing are the ones who always end up sitting on their own at tea-breaks because their colleagues usually hate their guts too - the system just rewards the staff who enjoy their daily power-trips.

I'm not sure I should admit this, given how people here feel about the DWP, but...

Part of the reason that I dread going there so much is that I had a couple of melt-downs in the same office...

...while I was working there!

It's a long time ago now, but I was massively in debt and incredibly desperate for a job at the time, and under a lot of JobCentre pressure to apply for and take the job (a lot of front-line staff are straight off the register themselves - and yes, my official job-title was the (oxy)moronic "front-line officer"). It certainly wasn't my first choice, nor well paid, but it seemed better than nothing at the time (and certainly better than a benefits sanction). I didn't exactly try too hard during the interviewing and testing process, but it turned out that I didn't really need to as the turn-over of staff is so high (I saw quite a few trainees walk out on their first day working a desk on their own while I was there). I was made a "second-call" candidate, and enough people dropped out that I was offered the job and wasn't really in a position to refuse.

You couldn't really choose a worse job for an autistic person with vaguely lefty politics (an anarchist punk at one time). Having dozens of unhappy, often argumentative people to grill every day (if  a supervisor was watching, that is!), constant crowd-babble, and absolutely pointless and ridiculous targets to hit led to one of the worst periods of burn-out I've ever experienced (I would take a pop bottle with me up to my room when I got home so that I could pee without accidentally bumping into a housemate on the way to the loo).

The melt-downs were incredibly explosive from what I could gather from my manager - screaming and throwing papers around until finally legging it from the building. Very unusual for me; I'm usually a shut-down person. I don't remember anything about them, really, besides coming-to sodden with tears in the park half-way home. My autism diagnosis was decades away yet, and according the Occupational Health shrink that they sent me to, I had a "Messiah Complex" (good luck looking that one up in the ICD-10 - and rather ironic for a life-long atheist!)

Thankfully, the union rep' was a really good egg, and after a period of working behind the scenes in the stores which didn't work out either, they let me go and made it as easy as they could for me to claim Incapacity Benefit.

I did learn one thing though. The jobsworth staff that every claimant (oops, sorry; "customer") dreads seeing are the ones who always end up sitting on their own at tea-breaks because their colleagues usually hate their guts too - the system just rewards the staff who enjoy their daily power-trips.

Yes, the same was reported on the Disability News Service just recently, and frankly, it doesn't surprise me very much. The vast majority of staff are good, conscientious people, and the pressure from higher-ups to enforce blatantly unfair or impractical policies is relentless and extremely intense. It's a recipe for anxiety and depression even for those staff who don't identify as disabled. On the team I worked in, it was rare that there wasn't at least one member of staff absent for anxiety related reasons.

Sounds awful but it's good you got out of it better the other side. It was recently revealed the Department for Work and Pensions has the worst record of any employer in the UK for losing legal cases of discrimination against its own disabled employees!

Link: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dwp-work-pensions-employees-disabilities-discrimination-cases-pay-out-million-a9385446.html