Something was seriously wrong with my customers today

[Slave to the Phone]

And I hope it keeps up.

My customers are always stressed out before they step in the door. (When one lives at that level of poverty, the daily stress and worry about bills is sometimes overwhelming. I speak from experience.)

If I cannot complete someone's case because I need information, the customer has to bring it back. They knew that they would only have 2 business days before Christmas to get food.

Meltdowns over being pended, denied or approved for a very low amount are common and at this time of year are expected.

Today, I saw a lady who had taken the day off work unpaid and drove 80 miles to get to our office. Denied, over income. She thanked me and then filled out a survey that said I was wonderful.

An elderly lady on social security was only eligible for 24 dollars for December and I had to take a dollar away for 2017 because of the COA increase. She blessed me and wished me a wonderful Christmas.

An elderly gentleman came in to renew with changes. He was now receiving social security and his wife was working. Denied, over income. He asked for my sup, so Matt went out to talk to him and came back laughing. Instead of complaining, he wanted to tell Matt how kind and compassionate I was.

A single mother who had taken the day off work to wait in our cold and crowded lobby to apply for food stamps for the first time. Going by what she told me, she was going to be approved for a measly 150 a month, prorated for December after she brought back the verifications. She was so happy that she asked if she could hug me when I came out for signatures.

The rest of my cases were doing the pended part of cases and EVERYONE had EVERYTHING requested.

If there is something in the water, I want to know about it so I can see that it continues.

[Pixelated]

Wow. Those are the people that make you wish you could show up at their house with a truckload of food and a bag of cash. Grace and dignity under pressure. It ain't easy.

[crazyofficeclerk]

Enjoy days like this, they are few and far between. I've been doing the same job as you for several years now. It doesn't happen often.

[notalwaysright]

I know it's not the same, but we ran out of the normal sized paper bags, and all we had were the smaller ones. I didn't have anyone mad at me about it, and a lot of people even turned down my offer of several smaller bags. I get conflicting info about if we're supposed to charge for them, and I know other stores don't charge for similar sized bags, so I give them for free. I mean, it was crazy busy, people were buying tons of stuff, and nobody got mad.

[Slave to the Phone]

WOW!!! Another food stamp worker? How cool is that! If you work in the land of we don't need anymore sunlight, we could fill a 20 page thread discussing the problems we are having with the @##%^* updated, new and improved windows based system.

We are a kiosk office and I choose to do my interviews over the phone unless there is real reason to have them in my cube. Other workers do bring their clients back and it seems to me that the face to face customers seem to feel freer to express their opinions, plus when I'm on the phone, I'm only speaking to the Main Contact, not the whole family.

(This is actually helpful for them in many ways. For example: if I know something, I have to act on it. If Mom says that nobody is working and that they are living on her SSI, as long as their income meets their expenses and our hubs don't show any other reported income, I just take her word for it. When the 12 year old kid pipes up about how successful her tamales are, I have to act on it because now there is self employment income.)

Today followed the trend, but it was so slow that nobody had to wait longer than an hour. Happily, I only had to deny 1 case, but she expected to be denied anyhow so she just thanked me for trying to help.

[Shyla]

I feel bad for those people. Everyone needs food.

[Slave to the Phone]

Shyla, I hope you didn't think that I was making light of my customers' issues.

I honestly have a lot of sympathy for them and I always do everything I can to complete their cases. I also don't take it personally when they yell at me because I know that to them, I am the face of the Government.

I will make fun of the obvious scammers, but they are truly not that common. I only see 1 every week or so.

It honestly does distress me when I can't help someone who is obviously in serious need and there are a lot of rules that I disagree with. Most cannot be challenged, they are written in stone but if I can use the rules to approve someone for a month or 2 months with us both knowing full well that they will be stopped, I will do that.

Case in point: Per long standing federal laws, there are certain drug related felonies that disqualify someone from receiving food stamps for life. I ask about that during the interview. If someone tells me yes and is the only one in the case, I can stop the interview and deny the case without doing anything else.

Or...if the person is otherwise eligible, I can approve the case, request court documents to verify that this actually is a disqualifying event and send everything up to the folks who will make the decision for me.

This is a much longer and more involved process for me but its the way I always go.

Of course, I'm human. Their attitude goes a long way in convincing me to go overtime in a case that I am obviously going to have to pend, or in wasting time completing a case that I know will be closed by someone later.

-----

So, yesterday I interviewed someone who I am sure has a grow house. He didn't really care about the food stamps as much as he cared about getting his medical insurance. A very nice and personable young man who worked part time at a fast food place and grew and sold organic produce as self employment.

When I asked him to give me a monthly breakdown of expenses and income for his farming income, he was able to look it up on his phone and fill out the paperwork. While I wasn't able to allow his full electric bill as a farming expense, I was still able to allow $400 a month. From what he reported, he was making about 800 per month selling organic produce.

In a 2-story 2-bedroom shotgun apartment.

16 per month food stamps due to the farming income being counted differently than regular self employment. He would have been just barely over income other wise.

Medical approved for a year.

I am not a mandatory reporter. I am not required to ask what specific plant is being grown and sold. While I have asked people what they are growing in other interviews, its mostly out of interest but not a requirement. I didn't ask this young man and he never once said. Its possible that I could be on shaky legal ground over this, but if challenged, I'll just pull the government drone card and ask for policy clarification.