This Is What Universal Credit Does To You

Ricky D. Hale, of course:

You’ve been claiming Universal Credit for months now. You hate everything about it. The weekend texts demanding you get in touch, the fact you can never get through to a person, the bullshit 35-hour job search for work that doesn’t exist, the lies you tell to avoid getting punished for things you never did wrong. It’s a vicious system designed to appease the biggest dickheads in our society because people whose problems aren’t real are always mad at you for no reason.

Maybe your mental health would be your excuse to get out of this cycle, but no way are you going to admit to a weakness you won’t even admit to yourself. Your mental health is a direct consequence of your situation. It’s a symptom of Universal Credit, but there’s nothing wrong with your mental health, you’re fine. Everything you experience is vague, distant, grey because your brain is never fully switched on. You don’t even know why, you just know you’re lazy and every bad thing you never asked for is entirely your fault.

You did nothing to deserve this and yet here you are, popping a bowl of porridge oats into a microwave you’ve never cleaned, starving and not remotely enthused about eating. You’re using water on your oats because the milk you’ve been diluting all week has run out. You eat and it feels like nothing, like your body is getting no nutrition because porridge is all you’ve eaten since last Thursday when you ate porridge and a whole apple, core included. You were living it up that day.

Wait, you’re not ungrateful, are you? That’s free money you’re getting. Other people work hard to eat! People like you have it easy. Layabout.

It’s cold so you put on the same hoody that you’ve worn for five days. You have a washing machine, but who can afford to use washing machines these days? They’re just things that take up space in the kitchen area of your living room.

You have a face-to-face appointment that could just as easily be completed over the telephone, but you don’t think life should be made easier for people like you, do you? You walk two miles over wobbling paving slabs and tarmac patchwork in the drizzle, past a pretty girl who is baggy-eyed, tired like you, definitely too pretty for you though. Maybe in another life you could talk to a girl like her, but what would a waster like you even say? You have nothing to offer anyone.

You walk past a bulldozer and hills of mud into a new building which is half-furnished, speak to a security guard and wait around until you’re called into a booth. You don’t pay much attention to the questions. The man’s expression says everything. You catch the occasional word, “obligations”, “sanctions”, whatever…

You barely have the energy to walk the two miles home because you’re lazy and useless and now the depression really hits you: brain fog, faintness and resentment. You’re back now. Back to the prison you have a key for. Do you dare challenge the prepayment meter to leave you powerless? Maybe just use electricity for a couple of hours, long enough to charge the Android phone that’s down to 17% battery, that you must have to perform your job search, that is so slow you can barely browse the internet. That’s what thirty quid gets you, junk, but that junk is proof of your sense of self-entitlement.

Maybe you’ll dare switch on your TV, the one that has a 32-inch flat screen because you’re so rich you bought it from your cousin for £50 last year, invalidating all future poverty you may experience in the process. How dare you not sell that TV! What do you think the four white walls are for, if not staring at? Anyways, you’re behind on your rent so you’ll probably be homeless soon unless you can get your arse into gear.

You have a job search to complete, but screw it, you’re going to relax first, get your strength back so you indulge yourself, lie back on your couch in a room cold enough that you can see your breath. You plug in your headphones, listen to music: Natalia Kills, Saturday Night. “You don’t know what it’s like to be seventeen with no place to go,” she sings. You know exactly what it’s like to be seventeen with no place to go. Who does she think she’s singing to?

The music is interrupted by a call, your mother, the woman who threw you out a few years ago. Fuck’s sake, are you going to answer? It rings a few times, cuts off, rings again. Sigh. You answer this time. “Do you have a job yet? Why has no one heard from you? What are you doing with your life? Why won’t you answer? Are you depressed?” Yes, I live in a shithole on the fringes of capitalism, barely see my friends who I don’t even like that much and I have no chance of getting a girlfriend, of course, I’m depressed. “No, I’m fine.” You tune out, grunt a response sometimes, sigh as the call mercifully ends. Your head is spinning now. God knows when it’s going to clear.

You sit in silence until your phone is up to 30% battery. It freezes so you reset it, visit the Jobcentre page, scroll past the same seventeen jobs you’ve applied for four or five times. You’re not going to apply again, you know why? Because you’re a lazy, useless piece of shit and it’s your fault they’re advertising when they’re not hiring.

You spot a new vacancy, minimum wage, located two bus rides away, no experience required, exciting. You fill in the Jobcentre application form, attach your CV that contains all the same information because they really want to see that crap twice. Next day you get emailed another application form and give the same information a third time for some reason. You get a telephone interview, give the same information a fourth time, and these fuckers wonder why people don’t get many applications done?

“What are your hobbies?” Um, staring at the walls, doom scrolling, counting away every second until the next time I have human contact, haunted by bad memories and kept awake by thoughts of failure. Uh, you can’t say that. “Going out with my friends.” That’s a lie. When do you ever go out?

“Thank you for your time. If you’re successful, we’ll be in touch.” They won’t be in touch. You can barely string a sentence together. You fill in your job search diary and get back to the pointless job search. Your phone vibrates. It’s a message from your friend. An actual message from someone who is not going to have a go at you, someone who remembers you exist, someone who wants to spend time with you. This is good and bad.

You walk two miles to a pub you hardly visit because when can you ever afford that? Your friend buys you a pint that you can barely drink because your body has forgotten how to process alcohol, but this very act is proof that you and people like you have far too much and waste all of your money on booze. The only answer is to make you even poorer, otherwise you might get a tattoo or something.

You sip the Carlsberg as slowly as possible, stare at the dregs in the glass, too embarrassed to admit you’re hungry, unsure what you’re even doing here, but it sure as hell beats staying home. You sit withdrawn, analyse faces, stare at pictures on the walls, pretend to look at your phone, anything other than make conversation because you’re too ashamed to talk about yourself. You fade into the background, let others do the talking and when you get asked a question, it becomes clear you’ve forgotten how to interact. All you want to do is escape to the cold flat, the prison you hate. There has to be more to life than this.

Days later, you get a call. It’s that company, they actually want you to come in for a face-to-face interview. This is miraculous and terrifying. Every face-to-face interview you’ve ever had has been terrible because you never know what to say and the only times you’ve been successful are with companies who were desperate for temporary workers. If you were to be successful, this would be a permanent job. It dawns on you that even if you somehow are successful, it just means permanently working for someone who is going to speak to you like crap and work you into the ground. Some escape.

You wonder if it would be preferable to remain unemployed. Both options would be terrible. Either owned by the DWP or owned by an employer. If you don’t get this job, you could be evicted so you’d better make sure you’re successful, but you’ve never been less enthused about something in your life. You realise that no matter what happens, your life is not going to change for the better. Work is not the route out of poverty, it’s just the route from one form of misery to another.