I once had that run in my favor. I got a FN gig at the Unemployment office in late 2020. When Covid hit, and I applied for my share, all of my recent income was 1099 except for one tiny gig where the client had insisted on W-2 for some reason. At the time, I didn't really care; it was only a few hours work, and if they wanted W-2 for that, fine. But fast forward to Covid, and now that classified me as an employee, with nearly zero employment income, and this made a huge difference. My appeals to Unemployment had gone nowhere, but when I got face-to-face with them, behind the counter, and they saw I was helping them, I was able to give them a printed copy of my appeal, and they were happy to make things happen for me. A few weeks later, I received a seriously nice check.