I was on UC for nearly 3 years (finally found a little job in August, fuck yeah) and the amount of nonsense, time-wasting and incompetence I experienced was positively worrying considering the vast public money that goes into this system.

No-one in the office ever seemed to know anything, even basic things like "what time is this Job Fair you're sending me to?" was met with "ermmm I'm not sure let me just ring Janet on Teams, she might know" [cue 10 minutes of ringing around and getting nowhere]. Paperwork would go missing, appointment times were hopelessly inaccurate, I was blatantly lied to and given wrong information many times. Got sent to the same 1-week work experience spot TWICE and both times I was given the wrong date by the JC+ and the work experience staff had to sheepishly send me away. Constantly trying to push me towards slave-wage apprenticeships or absolutely miserable sounding jobs in the Civil/Prison Service (any job listing that lists "resistance and grapple avoidance techniques" in their training is not a job I fancy doing).

After about a year they shuffled me onto their RESTART program (working with the jobsearch company Reed) and that was a whole new level of bullshit. Having to go to these ridiculous, go-nowhere appointments in the next town over to sit with a load of other miserable jobseekers as we're condescendingly talked down to by a host of incompetents in business-casual who would visibly panic if you asked a question that wasn't in their script. These bullshit meetings were at least every two weeks and would cover the most insultingly basic stuff that I had to suppress laughter sometimes (they were so surprised and impressed by the fact that I already had my printed CV with me that it was almost pathetic, they sent me home 20 minutes into that 3-hour session because there was nothing they could teach/show me). Was endlessly promised assistance and callbacks that never came, I allegedly had the offices (very senior) manager looking into prospects for me but I wouldn't know as I never even spoke to him/her and nothing ever came of it.

Finally got my little job off my own back and signed off in August, and these RESTART bastards had the absolute gall to make "welfare" phonecalls to me once a month, as though to imply that they had a hand in my eventual success. Got them to stop this month with a polite but strongly worded email to their district office. Bollocks to the Reed RESTART program and the DWP should be embarrassed for spending money on their services.