Back to trying to contact #California's Employment Development Department ( #EDD ) and get unemployment insurance ( UI ) benefits. Everything I saw suggested that using the website was the only way to apply, but a few days ago, I suddenly found that there is still a phone in option.

The site, besides having to give data to #id.me ( which by the way, the report about id.me was recently released, and it wasn't nice stuff ), also has some 3rd party security solution that dislikes my IP address ( either hotspotting on my phone or using a VPN ). Since they deal with people who are out of work and often on the edge of becoming homeless, they really need to relax about where people access their site from.

Anyway, calling the number puts one through a bunch of unskippable blah-blah, some "if you blah-blah-blah, press 1, if not press 2", and then usually ends with "we're receiving more calls than we can process; good bye" and hangs up. So every call is several minutes, only to find that you have to try again later.

I understand that EDD likely gave millions of dollars in unemployment and pandemic aid to people who were not eligible ( not a resident of California, not previously working in the state, prisoners, etc ) over the past few years. And I agree that they need to do a better job of ensuring that benefits go to people who are eligible as well as referring ineligible people to the proper agencies & programs. But EDD once had fully staffed offices all over the state, where actual employees saw your face and your ID, reviewed any documents you were submitting, and explained the process to you. Most of the problem with fraud is caused by their being too cheap to pay for employees.

This reminds me of a Christian denomination I once read about. They believe that salvation is only for people who are predestined, so they were attempting to disguise their churches so that people who weren't predestined would not wander in and accidentally be converted. (This was about 40 years ago, so I have no idea if the group still exists, or even what group it was.)