Sitting waiting in my local JobCentre Plus, I feel like a peg to be knocked into a series of holes that are the wrong shape by a peg-knocking machine.

My first visit to the JobCentre was not to sign on, it was to ask for help in getting work. I had been unemployed for about four months and felt like I had exhausted my own efforts. I had applied for graduate schemes, I had applied for bar work, I had applied to be a cleaner. I had exploited friendships for leads and references. I had doctored my CV dozens of times and I wrote my cover letters on spec. I had found no paid employment.

I was greeted by four G4S employees who shared a scowl six feet tall and eight feet wide. I have found my experience with the G4S men who work there mixed, but on this occasion, nobody explained anything. It was clear I wasn’t to walk past them without good reason, but not where I was to go to get a reason. I had spoken to no friends or family that could tell me what to expect, and frankly I was embarrassed to discuss it too much.

Eventually, I was noticed by a lady who’s job was to help people with the IT equipment. She told me that as a person with access to a computer with Internet connection and who was confident in his applications, there was nothing she or the JobCentre could do for me. If I was looking for Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA), she said, then I should visit the official website and start the claim online.

I wanted to make this clear because a lot of the people I’ve spoken to thought that it was the JobCentre’s role to refer you to vacancies. That has not been my experience. They do none of that face to face, and their website “Universal Jobmatch” is no more helpful than the other job listing websites, which are hit and miss themselves (although my personal favourites are indeed.co.uk and reed.co.uk).

I didn’t start the process of signing on until a week or two later, held back again by pride more than anything. I filled out the exhaustive form and prepared to go and be processed.

I was honestly quite hopeful to begin with. I prepared all the materials I was asked to bring with me. My appointment was at 1:30pm, for which I turned up 15 minutes early, dressed on the smart side of smart-casual but unshaven; I thought it struck a good chord.

I’ve only seen the working insides of one JobCentre, but I hope they’re not all like that one. The very space feels very passive aggressive. All those with appointments are lined up against a wall facing a myriad of office equipment. The desks give the illusion of privacy – when sat at them, they feel like contained offices, but everything everywhere can be heard. Watch closely and you can see the employees sharing jokes and rolling their eyes.

The man next to me had been given two appointments at two different JobCentres for reasons that I never learned. The poor man had the wrong dates. He waited a good while to learn this. My first stumbling block was when I was asked for my NI number. I had not got it memorised and I had not been told that I was going to need it. I am willing to chalk that one up to my own foolishness – perhaps it should have been obvious. I managed to phone someone to aquire it.

I was then asked to go through the form I had already spent two hours filling out, point by point. I understand the need for this. It would be important to get this information correct. That was when things started to get a little Kafkaesque. I was handed a leaflet on the importance of being prompt to JobCentre meetings and all the different ways my claim for JSA could be withheld from me. I was left to sit with this short leaflet for two and a half hours.

A pamphlet on promptness. Not even funny.

When I was talking through my CV and my approach to Job Seeking with the woman who finally saw me, all I was rewarded with was a look of confusion. I told her I had two degrees and the look that passed behind her eyes said: “There’s nothing I can do for this man.”

Since then, I have been brought to the edge of tears in that office trying to deal with the demeanour of some of those women. Some of them are, admittedly, lovely. Some of them victimise you with a level of condescension that is practically hostile. I am supposed to have a dedicated case worker – a “Coach” who’s job is to inspect screenshots of my inboxes to make sure I’m doing what I say I am, and then sign a piece of card. I have seen three different women at the JobCentre so far and none of them have been my coach. I routinely have to wait half an hour to an hour for a five minute meeting that has been scheduled for ten minutes. The last time I visited, I turned up a little early, foolishly, and was not allowed upstairs by the wall of G4S that met me at the entrance. When I got up there, there was so much room that everyone waiting could have lain down and there wouldn’t be a fire hazard in sight.

This is a system choked by its own mechanics – which I’m sure you’ll agree is symptomatic of a poorly designed and poorly maintained system. I don’t have any suggestions to improve it – after all, my two degrees are in Arts subjects. All I know is they still haven’t found the hole that I peg into.