Pass Me Some Scissors

so I can cut through some red tape. Arghh! I hate bureaucracy! I've gotten accepted into cooking school, so seeing as I am currently unemployed and getting EI (or temporarily on the dole, as it were). I thought I would see if I can get some government "retraining" funding in additional to my student loan. Well, I called the place who authorizes these things and I need to go to an orientation session. Fine, when can I do that? Wednesday morning, great! Ooohh, not so fast, I have to have a "return to work action plan" that states I need retraining. Okay, where do I get that? A different organization - agency B. Okay, I phone them, leave voicemail, wait all day, they finally return my call after 5pm. I guess they are busy. Now, I can't get an appointment to go over the "action plan" until Thursday. Fine, it's not like I'm doing anything else. Oh, wait, I need to go fill out some forms first, so can I drop in tomorrow? It takes a few days to review the forms and they don't have appointments on Fridays so I'll have to wait until next week to see a worker. As long as I can see a worker by Tuesday, I should be able to make it to an orientation session on next Wednesday.

Yikes! So basically I have to drop in to agency B, fill out forms, they send off those forms to EI to see if I am eligible to go back and fill out more forms (said "action plan"), and on the basis of that I may get a referral to agency A to fill out more forms to see if I am eligible for training assistance and the filling out of yet more forms. I think the idea behind this is to have potential candidates for funding give up from frustration. The bizarre thing is - agency A sends their paperwork to the same EI/HRDC place as agency B yet it takes two government contracted agencies and God knows how many forms to sort this out. Sheesh.

And to balance out my rant, something cute, Harold the mouse explores the bathroom: