How Centrelink convinced me to stay on welfare for the rest of my life
This comment was posted to reddit on Jun 01, 2016 at 10:16 pm and was deleted within 1 day, 2 hour(s) and 41 minutes.
How Centrelink convinced me to stay on welfare for the rest of my life
"I've decided to take your advice and stop trying and just collect my fortnightly pittance and live out the rest of my days with the miserable existence it allows me."
This attitude is pretty poor.
"20+ hours a week of overtime to stay on top of my workload got to me and I had what I guess most people would call a nervous breakdown. "
Your job might have been stressful, but you chose to work those hours of overtime. You can't blame anyone but yourself for your nervous breakdown. If the job required this much overtime and you couldn't handle it, you should have been looking for another job.
"At this point I was diagnosed as Bipolar"
Your Mum/girlfriend/friends might give you a bit of sympathy, but ultimately keep that it to yourself. The rest of the general population do not care. Do not in any circumstances tell anyone in your industry and if anyone asks how you are doing, tell them you are cured, on top of the world/back to your old self. Word gets around. People are paid to help, but ultimately its something that you will have to get through on your own. The bulk of the hard work will come from you.
"shittiest possible labour hire jobs you can think of. I did telemarketing, I worked in a factory opening boxes for 8 hours a day, I worked in an aluminium anodizing plant breathing in toxic fumes all day, I worked on a chicken farm spending two weeks doing nothing but killing roosters, etc, etc - before I finally settled on the shittiest job in existence - Taxi Driver."
These are not shit jobs, your attitude is shit. The economy sucks, and you are on the dole. Any job is better than being on the dole. Hard working Australians have these jobs and are thankful to be able to support their families, homes etc.
"I was actually quite good as a Taxi Driver but made the mistake of trying to report the Gold Coast taxi company to the government when they were teaching drivers how to bypass the new automatic meters designed to stop overcharging."
What the hell were you thinking man? Didn't you think of the consequences of your actions?
"The government (obviously now) didn't care but the Taxi company started doing everything they could legally get away with to convince me to quit."
So it changed nothing and you lost your job. I can see you were trying to do the right thing, but don't you know that life is unfair?
"car loan" - Get rid of it. You can't afford it.
As far as the Centerlink is concerned. Yes, the system is broken. They say they are trying to get you back to work, but really they just want you off the dole. The employment companies are for profit and while they may help a small percentage of people, they are really just there as a third party between you and centerlink. Life is hard and unfair, and there is nothing you can do to change it. You can only change yourself.
You are back to square one. In fact, you are back to below square one. You have a mental health issue. You have to start from scratch. Get rid of all the unnecessary expenses, eat well, exercise daily, take your medication, get as much help as you can from the services available. Learn to deal with your problems and start again. To be honest, if you are bipolar, should you even be working? that may help the finacial stress, but are you going to be able to handle it, without it altering your mood for the worse? Stop complaining and do something to fix your life, because nobody else is going to do it for you.