How the FL DEO did what my kids never could- Broke both my bank & my spirit

I have been meaning to write this story for at least a few months now. Each time I tried, however, I was immediately reminded of my reality and all that it entails. The truth is this: I simply have too many kids to expect elaborate things like completing thoughts or making time for self-care. Couple that with my fear of rejection and you'll quickly arrive at a disheveled and distracted me, unable to string even a few sentences together. Plus it certainly can't help that I am: A.) Superstitious as all hell and am afraid that writing it would somehow sabotage my chances of getting it resolved and B.) Afraid of any comments along the lines of “Be grateful that you got what you got and go back to work lady!"

But lucky for us all, my rage and current level of poverty have paved the way for small miracles. Here I am completing thoughts left and right, not giving a second thought to the naysayers or my feelings towards them! Go team me!

A Brief Background

I'm a veteran in the hospitality industry. That’s pseudo-fancy-talk that means this: I'm nothing more than a waitress. To be more specific, I have either served, bartended, or managed restaurants and/or bars for as long as I can remember. Okay, longer if you want to get technical, but that's a different story altogether!

Like most of the other women I know in the business, I am just a mother trying to support her kids. Because I squandered the opportunity I was given for higher learning, serving was one of the only options I had. It offered me cash every day and even the possibility for advancement, despite my lack of education.

For the most part, the industry was good to me. I'm a quick study and I soon became good at what I did. With my children's well beings to motivate me, I managed to support us all relatively comfortably. I never had to move them to less than desirable places with even worse school districts. Although, I did miss most holidays, as restaurants are pretty much always open, and that was difficult at times. Most importantly, I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I would’ve liked, mostly due to my working hours. Naturally, the best hours for me to make moola were, of course, the after-school ones. But all-in-all, we did ok.

Well, up until March of 2020 that is...

Enter COVID

We were all collectively affected by COVID. I guess global pandemics have a way of shaking things up. Perhaps you were only slightly damaged by the virus? Maybe a little bit? For me, the changes were swift and terrifying.

March the 17th was the first day that I couldn’t go to work. I remember because that day, Saint Patty’s Day, is a big deal in my corner of the world. I live in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, where our “season” is a short and hard one. From January until Easter, we rake in as much as possible and March the 17th is imperative! I'll put it this way: if you know what you’re doing St. Patty's Day is at least a thousand-dollar day.

Unless it's 2020.

I spent that day in 2020 trying to recalculate my expenses for the year with only half a season to work with. Any way I sliced it, the end game was always the same- I was screwed. And then, as if to add insult to injury, there's Florida’s cap on unemployment. It's meager at best and impossible at worst. The $275 a week max wouldn't even keep a roof over our heads! The future did not look so bright.

As we all know, the federal government stepped up and supplemented that terrifying $275 a week with an extra $600. And although that still didn’t equate to what I would have been making, it certainly kept us from homelessness and kept me grateful. Plus I got to spend a lot (ok, all) of time with my mini’s, which was truly a gift for our family.

Fast Forward

Today, almost a year and a half later, it is hard for me to see any awesome in anything. Today I am looking at a pro/con list in reference to pawning the computer that both allows me to write and maintains my sanity! Today is downright scary!

That is because it has been 57 days since I have gotten any benefit at all from the FL Department of Economic Opportunity (aka FL Unemployment)!

On May the 13th I received an email from unemployment stating that some changes were made to my account and that if I was not the one who made them to contact them immediately. I was not and so I began the seemingly impossible task of contacting the Florida DEO.

That was a Thursday and I finally made contact with them the following Monday. That’s after calling NONSTOP from the time I got the email till they closed, mind you. On Monday the 17th, the clouds parted and the heavens looked down on me as I got a human being on the line!! The agent told me to file a police report and to sit tight and wait for them to contact me.

Being the good gal that I am I did just that.

Still Waiting

Today is the 57th day that I have to wonder how I am going to pay rent and feed my kids. I have been “verified” on their system for 50 days, despite the claim on their website that states it will be “3–5 business days” to update in their system. I have called every single day since and gotten through exactly 3 times. All 3 of those times I have been given a “verification” number to call. A number, I might add, that I have called and called. Relentlessly and religiously. Despite that, I have never had contact with a person there.

Now I don’t know if any of you have had the pleasure of trying to call a number every minute of every day with no success, but I do not recommend it. Especially if you have any mental health issues going in, as I assure you- you WILL leave with some. It’s annoying at best and it's maddening at worst. At this point, I look at my phone (which I had to beg a family member to pay for me I might add) as my nemesis.

Needless to say, my outlook on the future is bleak.

Normally, my reaction would be simple- I would go back to work.

But for me, COVID brought with it extra gifts. This virus has managed to completely deteriorate my mother’s mental and physical health. My children's caregiver has now become something completely different. It is hard and it is painful and it is sad. The only person that I ever truly trusted to care for my kids now needs to be cared for.

Never mind that my thought process these days has been reduced to the basics of food, clothing, and shelter.

But as it almost always goes, there is some good that's been born from the bad. The folks at WKGM Click Orlando have made it their business to help the helpless, to assist the vulnerable. They are doing it via their "Make Ends Meet" page and you can find it here.

But navigating through all the bad simply to get to the good shouldn't be necessary. The FL DEO is not up to par by any means and needs to be accountable for its lack of action in not only my case but the thousands of others that are in exactly my predicament.

Going through a forced career change and a pandemic is enough, thank-you-very-much. The next problem for the collective group of us that are still lost should NOT be escapable homelessness!