Centrelink or Missinglink was my response to the humiliation I received when seeking both Newstart and Disability Pension at my local centre.

To begin with it took three-and-a-half hours to be put down. I waited on a rather good-looking easy chair although I felt far from easy myself. The people waiting looked ossified somehow as if they’d waited forever.

Lots of spectral mums and waif-looking children in the bright but gloomy building; I felt like a hot coffee but like everything else it was comfortless.

My spine appeared to be sewn right into my seat after two hours; but the wait became like a war of attrition. Do you give up on being seen and head out into the starving street again or just put up with it?

The hum of bureaucracy and grinding away of human hope; all I could possibly think about was my phone being disconnected yesterday and nothing in my fridge but ignominy.

After a long sit I heard what sounded like my name being announced. The speaker used denigration to put me down in public.

“Mister Barry Dickins. Barry.” But there was something accusatory in the way it was spoken; as though I were a sinner in some mystical way.

I walked across and tried to smile at a most intense sort of preoccupied gentleman. I knew there was zero chance of him smiling at or asking me how I was going.

Last week I had to eat Salvation Army food which was all tinned, but they also gave me a can-opener thank the lord!

I was startled to observe the man at Centrelink sweep all of my personal cards from the small desk. Among them were my Working With Children Permit For Schools and my driver’s licence. “We don’t need those today,” he seemed to hiss like a gander and then he swept away my completed paperwork.

He hurriedly took me to a couple of public computers and told me he’d help me get onto Newstart and obtain my health care card. He winced when he saw how slow I was on the grubby computer which someone had left some cold dimmies on.

“Are you computer literate?” he yelled at me and the grotty half-eaten dimmies slid on the carpet where they resembled the eyes of dole recipients.

“Well,” I said, trying to peer through the slot with my utmost attention to detail. “I’m not that good. I just use the computer as a keyboard, like a portable typewriter.”

His face was all hot when he said ‘Oh, great!’

I then asked him if I could go to the Centrelink loo but that presented many obstacles, the biggest one being that the public, in order to successfully urinate, must go with a security guard.

A great big one went with me so I expected him to urinate with me, but he waited outside in the gloomiest fashion imaginable.

To his surprise I sincerely thanked him when I emerged.

I went back to the big inquiry desk and waited for forty-five minutes but the guy had gone to lunch. I managed to chat to another Centrelink staffer who informed me that I would need to provide thirteen weeks’ worth of salary slips as well as last year’s tax return.

I work as a casual teacher in schools and after two weeks I got hold of only two salary slips because the bursars had forgotten me; or that I had ever been conceived I suppose.

I still haven’t had a sausage from Centrelink and am heading for The Salvation Army again at Camberwell where their friendly staff have time for me.

Tonight shall be curried baked beans on hopelessness, I imagine.

I’m a hopeless sort of Christian actually but I always thought we were here to love each other and look after each other.

The god of love is not computer literate; not by a long chalk.

Barry Dickins is a freelance writer.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/there-are-no-benefits-for-a-soul-waiting-here-20140627-zsnvr.html#ixzz36I9tF05I