First Claim

First Claim

Zoya looked up at the shabby building with the small green Job Centre Plus sign poking out of its side. She then glanced at her watch, it had just gone past ten. She was early. Maybe I could go for a walk and then come back, she thought to herself. She knew she wouldn't, come back, but maybe that would be okay. Maybe she could just keep searching...
          As Zoya stood there considering whether or not to go in, a heavy rain began to fall from the grey sky. She looked up ahead at the entrance, there was a lone hooded man sat on the near wall smoking, his large bulldog was sniffing the concrete beside him. Zoya took a deep breath as she reluctantly made her way to the side door. It will be alright, she said to herself as she went inside, it will be fine. The small area inside was empty- there was a door at the end of the narrow passage way, a flight of stairs and a single lift. Zoya decided on the lift. As she pressed the button, the lift doors opened and she hesitantly walked in, she was followed in by a young Chinese woman. The hefty metal doors clanked shut behind her.

'Do you know which floor the reception is on? Is it the first floor?' Zoya asked the lady after a few seconds of silence. Just then, the lift doors opened and Zoya stuck her head out. There was no one around.

'I think it's the next floor,' the lady said as she stuck her head back in.

'Great, thanks.'

After a quick ascent, the lift doors opened again and the lady got off. Zoya followed her onto the second floor. She pushed open the door and walked inside the large open area crammed with identical desks with smart looking advisers behind them. There were two tall security guards on either side of the doorway looking down at her expectantly.

'Do have an appointment?' the podgier man said.

'I have an interview, at 10:30' Zoya responded sheepishly.

'Do you know who it's with?'

'No, this is my first time here.'

'New claims, second floor' he said.

'Okay thanks' And so Zoya turned back around, exited through the doors and walked up the narrow stairs. When she got to the third floor, she was met by two men who looked strangely identical to the men she had just passed downstairs. The area looked exactly the same too, with those same desks and monitors and advisers. As she absent-mindedly scanned her surroundings one of the two men turned his attention to her.

'Do you have your attendance card?' he asked

'No, I'm here for an interview.'

Right then a young Asian lad wearing cords and a chequered shirt not much older than her casually swaggered over clipboard in hand.

'What's your last name?' he asked.

'Doorani,' Zoya replied. She peered over at the long list in front of him and scanned it till she found her name near the bottom, she pointed at it and he ticked her off the list.

'Alright, you can take a seat. It will be a while.'

          Zoya wandered over to the sofa seats. They were all taken and so she stood awkwardly by the wall and watched the people flit around her. The place was buzzing with all sorts of different characters, young and old and of an assortment of colours. She felt strangely out of place. Zoya wondered whether to turn around and go back. No, she wouldn't, she would wait. She had come this far- no, she would face it. A woman approached the seated area right then and called out a name, a middle-aged man got up and followed her. Zoya wandered over and took the newly empty seat beside an old man and a young woman. Both were still and appeared to be lost in thought and Zoya turned her attention back to the circus that was the third floor. The advisers were click, click, clicking on the their computer mouses and there were bits of paper scattered and the same questions were repeated at all corners of the room: Do you have proof of identity? Are you claiming any housing benefits? Are you a carer? As she watched and waited, Zoya found herself wondering what their stories were, the different people, the colourful characters...

          Outside the rain was still falling from the grey October sky and the people filed in and out and everyone knew what to do and where to go and she just stared into space and her thoughts drifted and she listened and watched and waited. Some of the conversations were more interesting than others, some of the questions too, like why did you leave France? Or where have you been living all this time? When was your house repossessed? Zoya wanted to know more about the different people and had she been any where else she would have struck up a conversation with someone for sure, but this was new territory for Zoya. She felt displaced and rather uncomfortable and a bit guilty too, for being there. She had never had trouble finding a job in the past. Zoya had been working since she was seventeen, in fact this was the first time she was unemployed in five years. It had all happened so suddenly, things had fallen apart and now here she was- signing on at the job centre. What was worse, was that Zoya had no idea what she wanted to do, she didn't really know why she was there or what she was looking for. She felt lost. She felt like she was going nowhere in life- fast. The days were flitting by, months too and she wasn't moving, she wasn't going anywhere.

          Suddenly, after what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, a lady called her name. Zoya jumped out of her seat, walked over and planted herself in front of the desk.

'Hi, my name is Pat and I'll be helping you today,' the lady in front of her said. She was a big friendly woman- she had warmth about her, a natural friendliness.

'I'm Zoya.'

'Do you have any ID love?' Pat asked

Zoya looked through her bag and took out her passport. She slid it across the desk and the woman picked it up and flicked to the last page to see the picture.

'Great, I'm just going to need to photocopy this. But first, lets go through some the details on your application together, just to make sure you haven't missed anything or made any mistakes.' She tilted the computer monitor around so that Zoya could see it and then read the information out loud. Zoya followed, looking at the screen. Everything was a muddle, all that was written down, it was all incoherent and random – her work history and studies and finances and everything. Zoya felt disconnected to the words, they were out of touch with her reality, her real life- none of it mattered.

        Zoya nodded along all the time and kept repeating 'that's OK, that's all fine' until they had gone over the entire application.

'Right, so you need to sign these papers and then you'll see an advisor who will book you in for your first appointment,' Pat said finally. 'You can take a seat again and you'll be called over.'

'Okay thanks.'

          Zoya got up and moved towards a different set of sofa seats, this time in the middle of the room -they were empty. Not long after she sat down she was joined by an old Indian man and then a few minutes later a young black guy. He sat down a seat away from her, headphones in ears and legs outstretched, with a confidence and coolness that suggested that this was a pretty regular visit for him. As Zoya waited she once again become immersed in her surroundings. At the desk in front an advisor was talking to a man and woman, beside them was a toddler in a pushchair. Next to them a middle-aged Jamaican woman was speaking into a headset. As soon as her conversation had ended she warmly shouted 'Ai badman!' to the guy sat near to Zoya. He nodded at her as he shuffled in his seat before turned to face Zoya.

'Do you have your appointment with her?' he asked sympathetically.

'I have no idea,' Zoya said glad someone was actually talking to. 'Do you?'

'Nah, I'm with that lady over there,' he said pointing to the smart Asian lady in a corner.

'I don't know who I'm supposed to see, this is my first time here, I think someone's supposed to be calling me...'

'What time's your interview?' the guy asked.

'10:30' Zoya replied.

'Not long then.'

'It's 11:30 now' Zoya said laughing.

'Ah yeah..' he said not at all put out. He seemed to be a bit out of touch with time in a way that people with jobs weren't. There was a glad freeness about him, a certain sublime. 

'I had an appointment with a finance assessor first,' Zoya continued.

'Ah.'

'Where are you coming from?' she asked him then.

'Battersea, what about you?'

'Mitcham.' He nodded in acknowledgement of some kind of shared unspoken kinship. The silence resumed for a while.

'How old are you?' the young man asked.

'Twenty-three,' Zoya replied.

'You're young'

'How old are you?'

'Twenty-five,'

'You're young' Zoya repeated and he laughed.

'Where are you from?' he asked. Zoya thought for a minute.

'Originally?'

'Yeah.'

'Afghanistan, you?'

'Africa' he said a sense of pride evident in his voice.

'Ah cool, where in Africa?' He muttered a reply but Zoya didn't hear, maybe Rwanda she thought, he looked Rwandan.

'I'm Callum' he said finally.

'Zoya.'

          Just then the big man at the door came up from behind. 'Miss, the lady's calling you.' Slightly put out, Zoya quickly got up and followed him to a desk where a small stern looking lady was sat waiting.

'Okay I've got a lot of paperwork for you to fill out' she said before Zoya even sat down. 'I should tell you now that as you chose to leave your last job you might not be entitled to JSA.'

'But I was only working on a casual basis,' Zoya said annoyed. She knew something would come up, things were never simple or straight-forward for her. There had to be some sort of problem, there always was.

'It doesn't matter. I need you to sign and date this and then this and then fill out this form.' Zoya looked down at the ever growing pile of papers feeling overwhelmed.

'Is this your first time claiming?' she asked looking Zoya in the eye for the first time.

'Yes' Zoya replied quietly before asking the one question that mattered to her at that moment 'If I don't get JSA then is there any point of me coming here?'

The lady shifted in her seat.

'That's up to you, you'll receive national insurance credits...' she went on for a bit speaking in a language Zoya didn't understand before changing the subject.

'Okay so I've put you down for admin roles as that's what you've been doing for the last fifteen months...' Zoya was lost. Admin? What?

'I'm not looking for an admin position, my last job was in visitor services.' The lady looked at Zoya blankly.

'Okay, I will just sign these,' Zoya said, she suddenly had an overwhelming urge to escape. She quickly signed and dated the pieces of paper, before moving on to the form. She stared at it for a long while not knowing what to write. If only she had stuck with the same job for long enough, if only her work history wasn't so scatty, if only she didn't look so crazy on paper! She jotted down anything before swiftly sliding the papers back to the woman sat opposite her.

'Look, when you have your first appointment, you'll have a lot clearer idea of what to do,' she said reassuringly. Zoya didn't buy it. The job centre didn't have the answers she needed. Of course they didn't.... 

'So this is your first appointment,' the lady said handing her a small attendance booklet with a date jotted along a blank white space. 'You'll have to come in once ever two weeks, however this week there aren't any available advisers. You'll have to sign in anyway. That's everything' she finished. 
'Okay thanks,' Zoya said as she quickly stuffed the papers in her bag and got up to leave. She said a quick goodbye to the security guards as she exited though the door and then hurriedly walked down the stairs. 
          It was still raining heavily when she stepped outside, she pulled her hood over her head. So now what, Zoya thought, as she wandered down the street. She decided on a whim to head to Waterstones to read for a while, to be transported to a different place for a bit, before getting the bus back South...