I’ve just been to the Job Centre to sign on, as it’s that time of the fortnight.
There was two queues of people waiting at reception (two members of staff working on it), and I suddenly had a wondering: Why do I have to queue at reception?

I queued regardless, because everyone else was doing it.
When I got to the front, they asked who I was, I said I was there to sign on at my appointment time, and they asked me to take a seat.
This is what they did last time.
They don’t write it down, or make a note of who I was, so what was the point of asking?

I pondered this point some more while I was sat down in reception waiting to be seen.
As I was doing so, a black guy wandered in and had the sheer audacity not to join the queue, and attempted to just walk into reception, where he’d presumably have taken a seat and waited to be seen for his signing-on time.
He was immediately approached by a running security guard complete with uniform, walkie talkie and everything, to ask who he was.
He explained calmly he was there to sign on – and was that alright?
The security guard glanced him up and down, and then checked for invisible backup behind him, before negating to actually tell him whether this was OK or not, and wandering off.

Several questions crossed my mind really.
– Why do they need security (there is 3-4 of them)?
I’m assuming they have some money somewhere in order to pay people in emergencies, but I doubt it’s in reception.

and perhaps more importantly:
– Why do we all have to announce who we are, if we know the prior procedure already, and they don’t do anything with that information anyway?
Not only that, there’s two people at reception. It would be only one if they were just using it for actual general queries, which would free up an additional person to carry out the signing, reducing the wait (and workload of other staff) further.