Day: July 21, 2012

Ok so here’s the deal.

As I’ve chronicled The California Employment Development Department is anything but what it’s name claims it is.

We’ve learned that calling them and reaching a human being is impossible.

We’ve learned that when they call you to ask you questions in their Eligibility Interview process, that they are unable to transfer you to any other departments. But occasionally they can at least answer a question.

We’ve learned that EDD does not know what a directive statement is. They prefer to use passive voice in their correspondence, suggesting potential actions that you might wish to take when the drug induced haze of your medicinal marijuana or ‘shrooms wears off.

Today we’ve learned that if you happen to be one of the people who owns a macintosh computer OR if you happen to run one of the Linux variants  that you had better be prepared for your claim form to take between 2 and 5 hours to file online.

Yes! You read that correctly. 

It seems that the EDD is Windows-centric 

On the Macintosh platform ANY error in data input will cause you to have to force quit Safari because once the EDD generates an error dialog box in Safari you CAN NOT CLEAR THE ERROR DIALOG. No matter how many times you click on the OK button.

This means if you fail to put two zeroes after a decimal point, or you include an apostrophe in a contraction in a text box, or you have a dash in between the area code and dialing prefix on a phone number, you’ll generate an un-clearable error.

And guess what… You’ll get to go right back to the beginning of the form and start all over again.

I finally re-loaded an Virtual machine containing Windows XP just to be able to get through the damn form.

I’m trying to print a copy of my EDD entry form right now… and I think that the print routine has hung, Which means that I’m going to get to re-enter all the information yet AGAIN.

The irritating part of this is that the ONLY way to communicate with EDD in terms of filing claims is to do it ONLINE. Given that fact, you’d at least hope that they could program their fucking form so that ANY modern web browser can be used.

Mind you these are the people who are responsible for BILLIONS of dollars in California tax money, and they can’t be bothered to test their forms for compatibility.

Considering that Apple is still based in Cupertino you’d think the California web sites would at least work properly with Apple systems.

Of course, at some point Apple will look at it’s bottom line, then look at the tax burden it’s carrying because of it’s presence in California… And they’ll move to another state.

If companies like Hughes and Northrop Grumman decided it was time to move… Apple can’t be far behind…