Next!

Finally, my name is called. Or a reasonable facsimile of my name. I am not sure what is so damn hard to pronounce.

I approach the desk and am asked a few routine questions by someone whose face seems to have been dismantled and haphazardly reassembled at some point. Perhaps by Stevie Wonder. (Maybe he'll rearrange a catchy tune about it, too. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: The Remix.") She/he is hard to look at.  I can not be certain of the gender based on the usual jewelry, attire or makeup cues. I look for telltale signs of a bra strap since boobs are no longer a dead giveaway. I give up and decide to skip any polite references like "Ma'am" or "Sir."

She/he scrawls something on my form (even the fingernails don't give up the tapes!) and stamps a number on the bottom. I listen attentively (though with somewhat crossed eyes) to instructions to take a seat in another groady orange plastic chair, in another section of the Office of Unwashed Masses, to wait for my number to flash on a screen.

I find the most inoffensive spot to sit down.  I look around at the others waiting for their numbers.  Most of them are scrunched down in their seats sleeping.  Maybe that is why the annoyed-sounding people in the high walled booths are screeching the numbers as they click through them on the LED screen.  I am sure I am in Oz.

There are no magazines to read, only pamphlets about other services most of these folks might find interesting. Free baby formula. Learning to read. Free school lunch programs.  Free transportation.

Aware of my failure to fit in at this moment, I pull my sleeve down over my Cartier watch and flip through some papers. I dare not take out my iPhone and start scrolling through Facebook. (But wouldn't a Check-In at the Office of the Unwashed Masses in Hell Itself get the tongues wagging across the social network?) I just sit there and try not to look like an interloper.

I hear my number called. (They've given up on changing the sign that can't be read through eyelids). I can't tell where the disembodied voice is coming from.  The walls of the booths are so high I can't see anyone but the County worker directly in front of me who seems to be very distressed by her client at the moment.

And I wonder: Why all the privacy here and now? By the time you've reached this stage of the Unemployment Game, you've pretty much stowed your dignity, your privacy, and any sense of self worth, and the entire free world knows your are currently earning a big fat Goose Egg for a living and is mentally doing the math between what you used to earn and what you'll have to attempt to live on. (Hence the pamphlets.) Is there more humiliation to come?

Finally, a bangled hand and wrist appear, waving above the wall of a booth at the end of the room.  I jump up and immediately scurry to it.  Desperate not to lose my place in line. Desperate in a lot of ways.