well, my wife applied for assistance yesterday.
Well, Bills are starting to really overwhelm us and with my wife fed grand jury duty and her work place being a$$ about giving her hours so we need help.
Columbia gas sent us a paper telling us to go to this location to apply for help.
Thursday she goes to the the address instructed on the letter and charity isn't there. They had moved and the company now at the location did in fact try to help my wife to locate the new address of the charity. No luck. My wife called the charity and kept getting the answering machine. She wasn't able to go get help.
Friday she called the charity again. Got a hold of someone. They told her where to go and they squeezed her in.
She brought with her the letter from the gas company our pay stubs and our rent agreement. This is what others told her she would need. Not the letter or Charities told her what she would need to bring.
The woman at the charity did say she had been trying to get the gas company to change the address for 4 years and that it would happen may first because the gas company had such a out dated system that was just finally going to updated. She explained they needed another pay stub for us basically the 2 most recent ones. we needed to make a $150.00 payment to the gas company (which was hard to do...we had to ask for help with this from her mother.) she also had to apply for crisis assistance and they needed a copy of the gas bill. So my wife rush to get the majority of that done for the charity. got the payment made brought the other two payments and gas bill. She than went to apply for crisis help at the welfare office. Filled out the application than she was rather rudely told that the 4 pay stubs wasn't good enough that they needed ALL of March pay stubs not the two recent ones and IF don't get it would hold everything up. My ex manager has been rather a jerk not giving me and a few co-worker (now at a sister property) our pay stubs since we got direct deposit. He refused to give us these stubs for a good year or answer my co-worker's question about his pay decrease.
My wife felt depressed, humiliated and just cried at the way this woman attitude was at the welfare office like who the hell are you to ask for this help.
Our system and country is really FUCKED UP!! and caps doesn't do that term justice. Things are really screwed up in this country. My wife is just so disheartened by everything that has happened to us she is getting into a depression.
My wife and I have always felt there were those who needed this help more than we do. We have no children and we normally have always muddled through. Seeing the process one needs to do to get help it made my wife upset as well. She felt like she was jumping through hoops NO one said (look you need to have this.) She had to guess and why the hell are certain pay stubs needed for one form and other pay stubs needed to other help when all this is basically connected all together. You have to go to at least 2 different places and can't apply for one without the other.
When my wife's pen pal from England had to apply last year for assistance last year in England and the story she told was in fact a different experience than my wife went through yesterday. England seem to be kinder and not so judgmental to this woman.
The Corporate and Uber rich have basically broken my wife's faith in this country.
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{{{{{diabeticman and Mrs.}}}}}
You should encounter empathy when in time of need, not this.
I am so sorry diabeticman. I hope you and your wife finally can find some relief after all that.
It all just feels so unfair.
Best wishes to you both.
