Yes, anyone who's trying to retrain is apparently "dole-bludging"

[fireheart17]

So I'm currently doing temp work for a correspondence community college (closest US equivalent to the term I can think of) involving data entry and processing enrolments.
I've flipped between two departments, one is the "support" team (who handles the actual enrolments and makes sure that people actually qualify for the course they're doing), the other is "basic education" (so people with poor literacy/numeracy skills can do courses to bring them up to high school graduate level-the people in these courses are typically people who did not finish high school for one reason or another or migrants who haven't been in Australia for very long).

Some of the bitching I have heard from the departments over the last two weeks however, makes me mad . Mostly because I fall into the categories they're bitching about. (To make things short, I have an anxiety disorder and have been forced to retrain as a result-I can't go back into childcare, so I'm looking at office work. I figure with this one, if I can get into a "small-medium" sized place, my anxiety is not likely to have major flare-ups if I opt to do reception work. The place I'm at is huge, but I'm also only part of a small department, so me screwing up only affects the department and can be fixed.)

Now, to sum it up, in my state, most training courses through us are subsidised by the government. How much of a subsidy you get depends on your previous qualifications, your age, whether or not you are taking an apprenticeship/traineeship (the difference boils down to the name-literally), if you are Indigenous or not and if you have a disability or not. The criteria is slightly tricky, but for a number of qualifications:

-If you have not completed anything higher than the qualification you are planning on studying at any time, you will be subsidised. The cost depends on how many qualifications you have. (So second courses are slightly cheaper?)
-If you are Indigenous (and can prove it), you are fully subsidised (as in, you pay nothing)
-If you are disabled AND you are taking on the course in order to retrain, you may or may not qualify for a full subsidy, depending on your background and a few other factors. (Disability over here includes psychiatric illnesses, so theoretically I would qualify)

-For certain higher qualifications, the previous qualification rule does not apply, but the other rules still do.
-If you are unemployed and/or on government benefits, you will get HEAVILY subsidised for a training course depending on the course-the previous qualification rule still applies.

I've come across a number of people lately who seem to have issues with all of these and the bitching is just...ugh. We don't even deal with these people face-to-face, we deal with them over the phone or via email. You don't know their full story, you do not have a right to judge why they are doing a certain course.

Examples of bitching I have heard:

-Apparently people who have mental health issues should not study "aged care" courses. (the issue with this is more that the person in question believed that those people just wanted free handouts. I shut her up by pointing out that it depends on the degree of disability. Thankfully she was moved AWAY from me after that)

-Someone who was studying teaching but kept dropping out after 2 years (as in she'd enrol, drop out, enrol drop out) of study wanted to enrol in a course we offer that would enable her to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to adults. The reason? Apparently she was "child-phobic." The following rant from this lady had me going at this and I very nearly asked to be moved back to my original section.

-Another one had someone submitting 2 applications, where they had claimed they weren't Indigenous on one, but had done so on another one. Again, apparently this person just wanted a free handout.

You don't know the full story, so what fucking right do you have to judge others?!

As for me, I am planning on retraining in another field, in my case it's Business Admin. I plan on undertaking a legal focus for the course if I can purely for the reason of having more job options open to me and that's it. I'm also getting help for my anxiety and learning how to manage it. I have contacted an employment service provider however, to help me make this decision. If they say "do the generic option" then I will. If they think I can handle the legal option, I will. They have a better grasp of my full story and can make that judgement accordingly.

[Blue Ginger]

I'm betting that the people bitching the loudest have never been unemployed or have gone from one job to another with very little time in between. I'm dealing with similar attitudes from people at the moment, including my sister who has had 2 jobs in her life and her previous boss got her the 2nd one.

I was made redundant at the start of December, then had a physical breakdown just after. My body decided that I wasn't listening and it needed a break. 2 kidney infections, a throat infection and 3 migraines later, it decided I had slowed down enough. Then mid January, I had a mental breakdown. It was basically backlash from all the bad things and major changes from the last 18 months. I'm only just starting to find my balance in the last few weeks.

So technically, I'm dole bludging, but it is easier to do that than try to prove to the department that I was actually not well enough to job hunt.

I agree that you (generic you) don't know what is happening in someone else's life unless you are living it with them.

[fireheart17]

I'm betting that the people bitching the loudest have never been unemployed or have gone from one job to another with very little time in between.
I agree that you (generic you) don't know what is happening in someone else's life unless you are living it with them.

One of the ladies who was bitching (the one who was handling 2 of the three examples I mentioned in teh enrolment support dept.) was a temp, but has since been hired by the college herself (I come from a temp agency-yeah, I'm one of "those" people. Nobody cares though-it's not like childcare where how much work you'll get with a site depends on your appearance as much as your behaviour*). So I really don't get her judgemental BS.

One of my milder bitchings is with people who just cannot fill out a simple form, but I have no idea if that's the enrollee doing it or someone else doing it. (People who will miss out on details such as address, phone number, year they finished school, their home country, their arrival in Australia and so on. Because I'm required to be accurate, I can't make inferences based on the form-so for instance, if someone puts down they're an Australian citizen and then puts down they arrived to Australia in 1998, I can't guess their home country)

I will be trying my darndest to avoid being one of those people during my time with the college as I am planning on going through them for my course at this stage (either them or doing it through one of the other institutes direct. Unlike my home state, where all of the community colleges are linked under one banner, over here, groups of colleges are linked together and they're all labelled community college. I'm part of the "Western <Town> Institute" but there's also "<Town> Institute" "Hunter Institute" "South Western <Town> Institute" and so on. Most of them offer the course I want to do online)

*-Appearance with childcare DOES matter in this instance because you are what the parents see, whereas office work does not necessarily rely on it if you are not in a frontline role. It's a combination of being safe (so no wearing thongs, giant hoop earrings and covering your shoulders), being practical (you don't work in a room full of babies wearing your best dresses) and also being smart (you cover up modestly at the neck and you're not wearing short-shorts). Most of the agency workers I've encountered will dress sensibly and will fit it better than some of the permanent workers I've seen!