March 2nd

I am still unemployed. I heard that it is important to keep busy and so I have been cleaning my apartment.

There are one hundred and sixty one vertical wires contained in the shelves in my refrigerator. I know because I cleaned them. I am excited to clean the horizontal wires tomorrow as they have not been cleaned in four years. However there are only nine horizontal ones and I am not sure what I will do with the rest of my day.

Today a lady from the Department of Employment Security called me to tell me I am eligible for ‘unemployment benefits’. I replied that I did not think there was much benefit to being unemployed and then she sighed loudly and told me that I could get money while I was looking for a job. I asked what I would have to do and she said nothing.

I replied that I get money when I do a job. She said I would get money because I didn’t have a job. I told her I did not understand and asked her if she had the right phone number. She verified my name and then she said that if I filled in the forms and gave her my bank account number she would start paying money into my account. I said I didn’t want that as I wouldn’t be able to pay it back and I was sure she had the wrong number because getting money for nothing was probably some form of crime and if I committed a crime I would go to jail and I couldn’t go to jail because I had a goldfish to take care of.

I realized I had not taken a breath in a while. There was a long pause. She then said she’d call me tomorrow and put the phone down.

I’m fairly certain this is a fake call. The last time someone tried to give me free money was when I received a $2 grocery store gift certificate following the purchase of a large amount of onions. I told the person at the grocery store that there had been some mistake and I left the certificate at the Customer Service desk so that they could ensure their accounting was accurate.

I hope this lady doesn’t call back. I placed a call thirteen weeks ago to get my boiler looked at because it is not functioning, and they could call back at any moment, and I don’t want the line to be busy.