A Letter To The California Department of Unemployment
Dear Department of Unemployment (EDD),
I am writing to appeal my denial of unemployment payments, and my reasons for this are manifold. I sincerely hope you can help me, because dear god knows during this process I have begun to wonder if I exist under some kind of ancient curse specific to the State Government of California.
Here is the sequence of events leading to my request for appeal.
In April, I filed for unemployment after it became evident the pandemic would shut down my work as a screenwriter and coverage analyst. I filled out the forms correctly. After several weeks and email inquiries — record enclosed here — I had received no paperwork, updates, or money. I called the claims office and was told a claims specialist would call me back. (My husband was also having issues, so when she did call, she spoke to both of us. His was corrected at this time, but he has always been luckier than I.)
According to the specialist, it transpired that someone else who filed moments before I did had accidentally mis-typed their Social Security number and put in mine. I know this, because the claim specialist gave me his full name and home address, although I begged her not to reveal personal information. She assured me that it was all fixed and my social security number was now correctly assigned to me, but it might take some time to get through the system. I was promised I would soon receive payment.
Three months passed while I patiently practiced empathy for the hard work your department is doing. I received no update, and definitely no payment. I filed again in the beginning of July, figuring all is fair in war and pandemics, and possibly my claim got lost in the shuffle.
I then received a letter at the end of July saying my identity could not be verified and to send in documents verifying that another incorrect SSN belonged to me. This was something of a shock as I was born in Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa at 3:30 in the afternoon on November the 23rd, 1981, during a large storm, I’m told, and have been an American Citizen with a SSN from that moment forward. I called EDD again to clarify and was told not to send in the documents as the letter requested because the SSN was incorrect (it was, by the way, a different incorrect this time) and that a claim specialist would get back to me with a phone call in one week.
Three weeks passed.
I called unemployment again, reached a lovely and apologetic man, who told me he would now elevate the claim to some kind of uber-specialist. This elite claims officer would be able to fix the whole situation over the phone, and backdate all my payments to the April claim. I was warned they were so mighty, dedicated, and unpredictable, they could call at any time between 8 AM and 8 PM, on any day of the week, so I MUST be prepared. This was a person I did not wish to thwart or annoy. For several weeks, I slept with my paperwork next to my pillow, just in case. Had they called at 3:30 in the morning, I would have answered.
Three weeks passed.
This brings us to today, September 9th. Despairing, I called again, and was offered the opportunity — and here’s where the ancient curse always gets you, it’s posed as an opportunity — to wait on hold for a claims specialist. Given that I had been snubbed by both the garden-variety and the fabled specialist specialist one so far, I agreed. I was warned it would be a while, as much as two and a half hours.
The wait was four hours and twenty minutes. When I got through — to a very hostile man who wouldn’t let me complete a sentence — I was told my claim had been disqualified because I’d neglected to send in the identity paperwork, despite multiple agents on multiple calls telling me not to send it in, to wait for a claims person to call. He insisted he absolutely could not help me over the phone, that I must first prove my identity and dispute the disqualification with a paper letter mailed to a PO Box written in the Year Of Our Lord 2020.
Possibly it is not wise to write this appeal in a tone bordering on amusement, but I have to say, at this point, it’s that or weeping. My family and I have survived the last six months with no work solely by draining the savings we’ve worked hard to build. My employment as a freelancer has never made much money, but thanks to the delays on this — delays that, as documentation will show, I had no part in causing, as I always entered my information carefully and correctly — I have missed out not only on six months of unemployment but the entire period of the $600 per week pandemic assistance aid. You may backdate the first, should you grant this appeal, but I somehow doubt I’ll see the second.
The consequences for disorder on this level aren’t just temporary or annoying. Years of savings has drained into such fussy delights as rent and sandwiches, while the EDD has given me misinformation, delayed, broken their promises, and broken my spirit for almost six months, including today’s four and a half hours on hold in which I had to listen to the same terrible jazz guitar sting approximately eleven thousand times. I baked an entire peach pie from scratch, got in some steps, and then just proceeded to go absolutely mad. I would have called my therapist or possibly my mother to keep me from fully losing it, but I had to keep the line free.
I have respect for the workload of the department at this overwhelming time, but not for the continued disorganization that has torn my safety net into more of a safety thread chewed by a hyperactive labrador, and done god knows what to my health.
Please see the attached documentation proving I am who I have always been, and I hope you will grant the appeal, to give some faint sign that you are who you are supposed to be.
Sincerely,
Jessica Ellis
