Thursday

I have an interview with someone who entered the country five years ago as an asylum seeker. He arrives one and a half hours late for his interview, and when I ask him why he is so late he says he has been somewhere else, putting me in a bad mood at once. He has never worked, and when I ask him which disability or health condition prevents him from doing so, he says: 'I have to take tablets,' and suggests I should talk to his social worker. Since I would rather stick red hot pins in my eyeballs, I commence what we call a work-focused interview, in which we try to persuade someone that working is far better for them than living on benefits. As that is sometimes patently untrue, and we cannot actually force someone to take a job, our success is limited.

This particular customer says he has never worked, has no skills or qualifications and has never been to school, even though he can read and write. I ask him what work he would like to do, and get no response. (The answer he would clearly like to give is no work at all). I talk about the various training schemes we have in place to get our customers 'work-ready' and get no response to that either. As I sit there with my blood pressure mounting, he asks me a question. Can he have some more money? With gritted teeth, I point out that he is already getting the amount of money laid down by Parliament, plus housing benefit, plus council tax benefit, plus free prescriptions...... I am beginning to sound a little hysterical, so I terminate the interview and send him on his way. After he has gone, I fill in some forms to send to our processing centre. It is a condition of his benefit entitlement that he must both attend and participate in work-focused interviews, and although he attended, I don't think he participated, so I'm going to try and get his benefit cut. I probably won't succeed. Is it wrong to expect a little gratitude, after feeding and housing someone for five years?