Next time I'll skip the suit and wear sweatpants like everyone else

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Employment Development Department's cheery offices on Turk St. for my "personalized career coaching" session, a requirement of receiving unemployment benefits.

Personalized, it turns out, no longer means "one-on-one;" the days of George Costanza dating the EDD officer's hideous daughter to keep the government cheese coming are long gone. There were about 40 of us packed into the Mission Dolores room where Karen, who has long wavy silver hair and has been with EDD for 41 years, reassured us by telling us that, in her tenure with the department, this is the worst it has ever been.

The crowd was colorful and very engaged. When Karen opened the floor up to questions, it was open season.

"I'll tell you it's crazy out there! People be living in their cars, they can't get no job. It ain't never been like this before," shared a curvaceous woman in an Obama sweatshirt up front.

"You're right," Karen affirmed enthusiastically, as did many other members of the group. Excellent question.

"I applied to a hospital the other day and there were thousands of other applicants for just one job," offered a middle-aged man sitting towards the back.

"Yes," responded Karen emphatically. "That's right."

It went on like this for a while. There were a few actual questions sprinkled in, but mostly the people just wanted to be heard. Karen clearly understood this.

Perhaps my favorite moment, though, was when Karen asked if anyone had had trouble getting through to the EDD call center. As the room started to erupt with frustrated indignation, she laughed and waved her arms to show she was joking, and then passed around a handout.

The EDD call center is hiring.