Joining the queue at Work and Income: Where no one seems happy

Work and Income offices: Leave your dignity at the guarded door.

"Go see Work and Income," said Prime Minister John Key, advising the homeless and unfortunate. We did.

One morning at a Christchurch Work and Income office:

It is 9.28am. Nine people and a toddler are queued outside a Christchurch Work and Income office which is sandwiched between Hell [pizza] and a liquor store. No-one seems happy. Everyone is holding official-looking forms.

Stacy Squires

Prime Minister John Key has recommended the homeless visit Work and Income.

I have never been to a Work and Income office before. I am here just to observe.  The security guard outside the  office looks like Rambo, parachuted into suburbia.

"Wait," he calls as I attempt to walk in.

The doors won't open unless he turns a key. Before he will turn the key, he needs to see my ID. He is holding a clipboard filled with pages containing lists of names. He searches for my name on the list. These are the people he won't let inside. He doesn't say why but he doesn't have to. Sadly, we all know what happened in Ashburton.

I don't have the right kind of ID. I need a passport, a driver's licence or an 18+ card. The only thing with my photo on it is my Press card which I show him but he tells me "that's not good enough".

It's a strange and confronting experience. He looks me up and down. I feel as if I am being judged. He is pleasant but intimidating too.

"I will let you in this time," he says sternly. "But if this happens three times I can ban you for life."

He turns the key which is attached to a chain on his hips. It feels like a scene from every TV show about a prison I've ever seen. The doors open to reveal an elderly man in shorts and shoes without socks trying to get out of Work and Income.

I take a seat in a waiting area near to the queue. A woman in blue warmly asks if I need any help.

A Work and Income employee gestures to a woman to come forward. Here, in front of the rest of the queue and anyone in the waiting room, her anguish must be laid bare. Pain is the main currency on display. Leave your dignity at the guarded door.

"Please," she says. "I haven't slept and I am in a lot of pain with a cracked tooth. I need to go to the dentist but my community services card has expired. The dentist says it's going to cost $400 and I only have $20 until next Wednesday."

As she speaks she holds her head high but I can see she is upset, in pain and trying to keep her feelings in check.

"Do you have a client number?" asks the woman behind the counter in a monotone voice. She sighs a little as she asks this. It can't be easy listening to these sad stories all day.

The mother fossicks in her manilla folder for the appropriate form. Her toddler gazes over his mother's shoulder at me. I try to play peek-a-boo to make him smile.

Later, when the woman is outside crying beside her car, I ask her if I can do anything to help her.

"Thanks, but it's OK," she says. "I just hate going in there, it's so demeaning. I don't want to be in this position, I never imagined I would be. I have no choice but to ask them for help since my partner died. I'm bringing up our children on my own. It is what it is."

I wait in something called the Heartland Services area. An Indian woman I chat to says the media should not use the word "poor". She wishes we would use the more accurate "unfortunate" instead.

The blonde-haired man wearing a singlet, shorts and jandals across from me is clearly nervous. He has one leg crossed over the other, the upper foot jiggling a jandal loose, as he fills in a form on a clipboard.

In a friendly tone he tells the woman with the monotone voice that it's his first time at Work and Income. He was made redundant and has been looking for work but despite lots of interviews he still hasn't found a job. Now he needs a bit of help. He says this in a  pleasant, conversational way but it's clear this admission is difficult for him.

She looks up, but not directly at him, passes across a form and replies: "You need to fill out page 12 and 13 and list the costs you want help with. Take a seat to your left."

Next up is a Filipino man who was lured to Christchurch by the rebuild but who has been unable to find work. His English is limited.

He passes a form to the woman behind the desk. She stares at it grimly.

"We can't just believe what you say," she says incredulously in a very loud voice. "Who will attest to that?... How much fuel are you using each week?... Just tick 2.4 litre."

The scene is unpleasant. It also feels discriminatory and, at the very least, rude.

It's 11.24am. I wait by the doors for a security guard to let me leave the WINZ office.

In the carpark, a middle-aged man sits behind the steering wheel of some sort of Toyota farm vehicle. He gestures towards the Work and Income office and comments to me: "Bloody dole bludgers."

For a certain segment of New Zealanders, this sad stereotype remains.

His arm is out the window and he's listening to the radio, drumming the side of the vehicle with his fingers. It's middle of the road FM.

But the song reverberating around the entrance to Work and Income screams of a certain serendipity. The Kinks are singing their 1966 hit song, Sunny Afternoon: "And I love to live so pleasantly, live this life of luxury..."

By Vicki Anderson