I was summoned by the EDD for an in-person appointment today. This is the first interaction I've had with EDD outside of applying for Unemployment Insurance and receiving my checks bi-monthly.

I assumed this was a one-on-one appointment where they would grill me about my job search and make sure I was actually trying to find work. Instead what I found was a workshop filled with 24 other unemployed people in the same boat as me. The workshop was slated to be an hour long because immediately after it conclusion another hour long workshop was scheduled to start.

If they are doing these workshops every hour on the hour, back to back, daily, there could be upwards of 1,000 unemployed people a week attending these workshops. Yikes.

The workshop itself turned out to be mostly the handing out of fliers, with some explanation or highlights of what the fliers had to offer. Each of us was given a 17-page packet and 17 individual fliers. So much for green!

Over the course of the workshop we discovered that 5 of the attendees (myself included) had been unable to reach EDD on the phone. That's 1/5 of the attendees at the workshop, which is not good odds for the functionality of the EDD telephone system.

Our workshop leader, Frances Chen (an adorable Chinese woman with a lulling accent) informed us that the faster way to reach EDD by phone was to use one of the phones located there in the career center. She said that if we reached the recording that said to try again later, we should hang up and try again immediately. And to do that over and over until we heard the "Welcome" message. Kind of like what it used to be like to try to get tickets on the phone from Ticketmaster back in the day.

Frances went on to tell us that once we heard the "Welcome" message we'd need to enter a magic number. She wouldn't tell us the magic number, but encouraged us to go to the front desk after the workshop and get it. Magic number???!!! What would I have done if I had actually gotten through when I'd tried?

OK, so after the workshop I went to the front desk and got the magic number. It's 130, for those of you who don't believe in magic or going to EDD in person. So I took my magic number and proceeded to one of the phones that would allegedly get me on the line with EDD faster. Only it's not that simple. There were 7 phones, all occupied, and 14 people waiting in line to use the phones. Yes, 14 people waiting in line to use a phone that only calls EDD. No wonder it's impossible to get through by phone. Yikes.

OK, so back to the workshop. According to EDD there are two job markets that are growing and will continue to grow: Green jobs and health care. Thank you, Obama. For these areas there is free training and a variety of careers. For those of you who are interested.

Actually, EDD did let us know that a lot of things are available for free to us. There are 6 career centers in San Francisco alone, each one like the one the workshop was held at. Again, yikes. If one career center is this packed, with workshops every hour on the hour and 21 people tying up the EDD phones, and this scene is multiplied by 6, it really goes to paint a very real picture of what unemployment in San Francisco today looks like. Again, yikes.

Each of the 6 career centers offers a variety of services, all free, including one-on-one appointments, resume reviewers, workshops on using the online EDD program CalJobs to find work, and a host of other services. One such service is a personality test! The Myers-Briggs personality test that ordinarily costs $100 and allegedly tells a person what career or field will best fit their personality is available to us free of charge. You can bet your bottom dollar I'm doing that, if only for the experience!

Other services that were of interest to me include programs that enable a person to go back to school. California Training Benefits is a California-funded program that allows a person to continue receiving their unemployment insurance while going back to school. The Workforce Investment Act is a federally funded program that provides funding for tuition, books, etc. for qualifying applicants. Apparently a qualifying applicant can receive aid from both programs, so that you can continue receiving unemployment insurance while going back to school with assistance from the federal government. Not bad, if you qualify. I doubt these programs will cover me, especially since I'll likely be going out of state for graduate school, but I will probably attend the workshops to find out more regardless.

In summation, I would say the EDD runs very much like I would expect a liberal organization to run. (I am assuming EDD is run by liberals because Republicans care about money, not about those without money.) What I mean by that is that there are a lot of good ideas, maybe too many good ideas, and not a lot of forward motion. A person can take advantage of no less than 22 services at the Turk Street career center alone, and yet you have to wait in line behind 21 other people and use a magic number to speak with an EDD representative on the phone. Their hearts are in the right place, but they have a long way to go before they are fully functioning. But at the end of the day they are paying my rent, so who am I to judge?