Good day, Dear Readers! It's lovely to see you as always! I hope that your weekend was good - despite that you, like me, are reeling from having undue sanctions. Sanctions that do not make any sense whatsoever! It's been a year now since I have been on Universal Credit. I hate it! I never wanted to be on it in the first place. If you have been paying attention to my updates/blogs, you'll realize that I was self-employed and on Working Tax Credit until the Tax Credits Office pulled a fast one on me and then tried to cover it up. Can you imagine that? A whole team of people conspiring to effectively destroy the business of one man. It is pretty sick, huh? Well, that's the Tax Credits Office for you! And, as you know, the DWP/JCP/Universal Credit systems are no different. Trust me, I want to get a job as soon as it is possible! I do not want to ever go into the JCP, Enfield Town, as an unemployed person ever again in my life if I can help it! Which brings me to this question... WHAT IS A WORK COACH? Here is a definition extracted from the Parliament.co.uk website: The Work Coach 31.Work Coaches are front-line DWP staff based in Jobcentres. Their main role is to support claimants into work by challenging, motivating, providing personalised advice and using knowledge of local labour markets. This involves conducting work-focused interviews and agreeing tailored “Claimant Commitments”.70 A job description is shown in Appendix 1. At February 2016, 11,000 whole-time equivalent Work Coaches71 supported nearly 745,000 out-of-work claimants across Great Britain.72 Each Work Coach is responsible for a caseload of around 100 unemployed claimants and conducts 10 to 20 claimant interviews per day.73 If you want to study the full definition here is the link: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmworpen/549/54907.htm I recommend that you take the time to understand what the REAL role of what a work coach actually is or supposed to be! In my experience, the "work coach" is anything but... The "work coach" is really a... WORK COAX The person who you go to see either once every two weeks or once a week is a "work coax". They do not give a shit about what skills you may or may not have. All they want to do is to funnel you (and others) into a job that they believe is easy to get into. They take the viewpoint that all their clients are workshy and are doing everything in their power to avoid work. So, they believe that they are coaxing such workshy people back into work... They believe that the easiest employment comes from the customer services sector. Customer services can include telesales. As I have told you previously, employers in telesales will take on just about any and everybody who applies. Such employers want asses in seats to man/woman the phones to generate leads. Again, such positions are in very small numbers these days as many, many companies that once utilized telesales teams are gone! Gone out of business due to malpractice. I used to work for quite a few companies in the glorified position of a Telesales Executive; it sounds better when you put it like that. But the job itself was demoralizing. I could write a book on the subject of telesales! Anyway, I digress... STRESSED OUT Yes, I can imagine that the work coax is stressed out due to being told that they have to hit certain targets. What? Don't you believe me? Okay! Check this out: https://slutocracy.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/interview-with-a-job-centre-advisor-sanction-targets-corruption-revealed/ You can find much more articles of this nature online. Anyway, because the work coax has to reach certain targets they have become corrupt and very, very ruthless. Corrupt, in that they, the work coax, do not abide by the work coach description as above. No. They take it upon themselves to do what they think that they can do to (a) fast track a client back into work and (b) demoralize the client into accepting a job that he or she is overqualified for. Ruthless, if you are seen to be difficult then they will bring about a situation in which you can get a sanction or a string of consecutive sanctions that will seriously affect your capacity to function in everyday life! Even if you have no reason to be sanctioned (and there is no justification to sanction the vulnerable) the work coax will engineer a reason or reasons. The pressure is so immense on them that they have to be seen to be taking their work seriously or risk demotion and the possibility of being fired. Now, do I feel sorry for the work coax? NO! HELL, NO! But they are human like us, right? Look, when we look back in history we can see how a minority of people can convince a majority of people that being cruel and sadistic to others because of an imaginary position that can come in the guise of a facade called uniformity. "I was just following orders," was the feeble excuse used by Nazi war criminals. The work coax does not have to follow idiotic orders that can ruin and/or cause another to take his or her own life. I have told you already about my exploits with my former work coax whom I have dubbed "Tricky Vicky". She went too far with her humiliation tactics and I let her know it without being violent or verbally abusive. In case you haven't been following all my updates - why should you? They can be incredibly long! But these are details of real life! This is not a soap! It's not a media drama. I suggest that you read my updates/blogs because they can and will help you in your situation. Even if you are employed you can benefit from knowing the reality and not what the media gives you! I digress... I wrote a 15-page letter of complaint to Tricky Vicky's line manager, Denial Delilah, and I am awaiting a written response. If I am not satisfied with the way in which my complaint was dealt with I will take my complaint to the Independent Case Examiner. I am not playing at all! I'M A JEWEL IN THE CROWN OF THE WORK COAX Even though I have a new work coax she is, sadly, just as ignorant as my former one. Like my former Tricky Vicky, Keep It Simple Susan/Stephanie Stepford (as in the Stepford wife of the DWP/JCP) is unable to listen and understand what I am telling her. I get the impression that, like Tricky Vicky, she thinks I am workshy despite telling her that I am going to be a Vegan Chef or Cook. So, this woman has me doing "work activity" in accordance to what she thinks her superior or superiors will allow and/or show that she is doing her job correctly. This means I have to waste a considerable amount of time applying to positions each day when I could be focussing on my presentation. A presentation that could land me my ideal job in weeks! Let me quote a sentence from the "work coach" job description (linked above): "This involves conducting work-focused interviews and agreeing tailored “Claimant Commitments." What my former and present work coaxes do is to tailor my Claimant Commitments to suit their particular and peculiar style of working; if my work activity does not reflect what they want then it is a reason to impose a sanction. It is outrageous and illegal! I have said it before and I am sure that I will keep saying it until I find work, the JCP and its work coaxes are just getting in my way! If my work coax would just listen to me she'd know that I am going to be a Vegan Chef or Cook. Last week, she was elated that I wanted to look into the possibility of creating a CV aimed at Customer Services with someone from the National Careers Service (a couple of floors above). I have to laugh at the stupidity of it all. Again, I have not worked in the capacity of customer service except bloody telesales and, believe me, the names of the companies I used to work for carry a heavy notoriety. I, quite rightly, do not want to be associated with those former companies. When those companies sunk without a trace I raised a glass or two! Good freaking riddance! My work coax should be looking to give me what I need in order to be able to work as a Vegan Chef or Cook. Nothing in my sweet life can be that simple! LMAO! I am a gem to her (my work coax) because I have that burning desire to attain my goal and she could be credited for being effective as a work coach. But, alas, no... My work coach would rather be a "work coax" and therefore it justifies her talking to me like I am a retard and getting me to do really daft unnecessary work activity. Like I have been saying and will continue to say, the consecutive sanctions for November and December 2016 prevented me from working on my presentation that I am sure would have gotten me my dream job as a Vegan Chef/Cook! I hope that I can share my presentation with you someday! One more time... Say it with me... SANCTIONS DO NOT WORK. THEY HINDER! THEY ARE HARMFUL! At present, as I am typing this, I am writing directly from my head and I dread the editing that I will have to do in order for what I have written to make perfect sense in terms of spelling and grammar. At present, I feel exonerated in knowing what the true role of the work coach entails. I was beginning to feel like an ass... Seriously, the way my new work coax talks to me at times you'd be forgiven to think that I had survived being hurled through the windscreen of a vehicle and spilled some brain matter on the asphalt. I knew before and now I know for sure that the work coax is essentially breaking the law by not adhering to the job description above. I feel stifled and not taken seriously when I know that I have every right to pursue my employment goal of being a Vegan Chef/Cook. I can and will attain that goal. The demands of the work coax (work coach) - at least in JCP Enfield - are illogical and not conducive to what I will eventually achieve and become, a Vegan Chef/Cook. I fight on! But God knows that I would rather put my efforts in doing something more worthwhile. There again, I want to smash this corrupt system of illogical unreasonable idiotic welfare assistance sanctions. This corrupt system of welfare assistance sanctions comes from a government that is supposed to be leading one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries in the world. Something is seriously wrong!