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| Talk,
Kim Sampson,
12 March 2001 | |
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Ann-Michelle sits at her desk, in seasonal white dress and matching accessories. She is demure in manner and brings with her dazzling outfit an air of purity to the dank perma-mustard hues of the benefit office. Ann-Michelle is responsible for new claims. Today, mine is one of them.
When I come to the desk most of the documentation has been prepared already. She nudges the keyboard with intricately-painted false nails, slowing down the already bureaucratic process. I am expecting many questions on how I expect to look for work in the coming weeks, but Ann-Michelle only asks which papers I’ll look in.
The office has been mostly quiet in the time I’ve been waiting. A couple of teenage boys shuffle, attempting menace, but it’s the middle-aged bloke who raises the alarm. Halfway through my interview he enters the office on account of being ‘fackin’ angry’ and prompts my interviewer to call downstairs for help. No one comes, and the skeleton staff in the ever more terse atmosphere gather round to listen to the man and his pissed grievances.
In the meantime, Ann-Michelle tells me about some of the other people I’ll be signing on with every other Wednesday. ‘There’s a woman,’ she says, a smile starting up, ‘that comes in here and thinks she’s above it. I asked her what kind of job she’s looking for and she said she organises parties. So I put that down on the form and she snapped and said she only organised exclusive parties, ones for debutantes.’
The blue-blooded claimant, it transpires, had recently lost daddy’s allowance. She is 38. Whether daddy died or not I am not told. Ann-Michelle raps a talon against the pitted caramel desk. ‘She thought she didn’t have to come in here, into this office. She genuinely thought there was a separate office that posh people go to when they’re on the dole. I told her we were non-discriminatory.’ Civil service parlance guides some of Anne-Michelle’s thoughts. ‘We do not discriminate on grounds of gender, race, religion or socio-economic status. And this woman tells me to get on the phone to Tony
Tony Blair yeah? And I said I don’t have a hotline to the Prime Minister, and she says “I know, but you’re the only bloody people I’ve got to shout at!” and then she says she’s going to write to her MP.’
It is doubtful that Martin Linton MP (Lab, Battersea) will be so sympathetic.
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