Why I asked for help was because we have had a terrible decade, it led to a layoff at a career that…read moreled to putting out tens of thousands of resumes. I was able to find work, but it was only at minimum wage work. My family have also struggled, I have had family members suffer through addictions and suicides. I continue to struggle to find anyone not only that will listen to me, but help me come up with better strategies so I can stay afloat financially and keep from making the same decisions family have. After calling 211 I was directed to calling the Distress Center. They were fine at confirming I was down and how I must be "frustrated." I want to find a better path to get off the downward spiral I've been on. Mostly I was told to call 211 again so I can call AlbertaWorks to get my resume looked at (which was never the problem seeing as I lasted at a career job before for over a decade, if I had a bad resume they also would have never hired me), or to call Prospects because they assumed my problem with finding better paying work must be because I must be mentally handicapped, which I am not. The other bad advice the service provided was to contact a company to see if I am living within a budget. The concept DC does not understand is financial problems happen from unforeseen costs more than anything. You can pay your bills, but the moment you have serious car trouble, the pipes are bursting in your home, your furnace is ready to explode, and you're on minimum wage, you're borrowing money. That is the problem, not my inability to understand how to budget. The complexity of life in Calgary on a low wage they don't want to understand. They only would say that yes they did care, but they were only there to provide emotional support. Which does not happen. I would have loved to have talked to anyone in any direction that would have tried any idea I could look into to improve the situation, not people who would say, "gee that's tough, gotta go there's another caller," "sorry, we're not here to give you a job," "maybe you should stop calling here and get a better job instead of expecting us to do it for you," "people with better jobs tend to have education (which I have), can take stress better than you, and are intelligent people," or best yet, "sorry we're volunteers, we don't get paid to try very hard." None of that makes me feel emotionally supported. In fact, I would harbor to say these people that talk to people going through the hardest moments of their lives and really should not be volunteering their time at this service.
I have asked to speak to managers about trying a little harder to provide better emotional support, but I've rarely ever been able to. One called me and told me to call 211 and go through the runaround all over again, another recently told me that if I get upset with them or their volunteers they will stop trying to help at all. Nothing was ever taken into consideration of trying to improve any of this service. That's because the people running it do not care about doing anything beyond verifying your problems suck. No one tries to actually listen that if any good ideas could be offered, maybe people would have less reason to call ever again.
The most entitled service I've ever dealt with. Should seriously get looked into, I hope the government of Alberta considers defunding as well as their sponsors.
