Of course Rahm Emanuel is on the airwaves spouting off nonsense about retraining and coding jobs.

I'd like to give you the perspective of someone (me) who actually tried to reinvent her professional life with training.

Spoiler Alert: It didn't turn out quite as pie in the sky as folks like Rahm would leave you to believe.

The day before my birthday in 2007 my entire department was rif'd (Reduction in force) from our corporate bank jobs.

I had been there for 9 years and was laying the ground work to go into Project Management or Technical Writing. I was taking classes at DePaul with the goal of getting an MBA while also taking classes for IT certifications.

Both were necessary because despite the fact I have a BA, I didn't have the math classes necessary to apply for an MBA program nor did I have the "official" certs to start making my way up the IT ladder.

Sensing that help desk & lower level system admin work would go the way of the Dodo, I was plotting my next move.

But all of that came to a screeching halt with my department's layoff.

When we heard the news (we were given a 3 month notice---more on that later) we had enough time to collect ourselves, absorb the news and start to readjust to our new lives.

I also believe that we were given that 3 month notice because we had to train our replacements. You see we had the type of jobs that couldn't be completely taught from the policies and procedures manual we wrote.

There were nuances that had to be explained.

So we trained, explained, got our severance and left.

Note: Remember I mentioned that this was in 2007?

Little did anyone know that the great recession was brewing.

I have written extensively about my 9 year unemployment and underemployment extensively in both my blogspot and the ChicagoNow blogs. If you want those stories, go back and read them.

I decided that after a number of job applications for not only jobs and I believed I was qualified for but for pretty much any job, I knew I had to switch gears and find a better way.

That better way was the Workforce Investment Act now called the Workforce Investment Opportunity Act (WIOA).

For those of you who are not familiar, IT training classes are *HELLA* expensive. For someone living on unemployment or a lower level hospitality job (waiting tables), thousands of dollars for a class that *might* lead to a better job is just not in your wheelhouse.

The WIA program would allow you a government grant to get the training of your choice for free.

I mean where's the problem with that? Many of us have gone to school and worked.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the issue.

The issue was the clusterf*ck that is the federal government combined with the sheer ineptitude of the City of Chicago.

Of course you can attempt to be proactive and call ahead to find out what you need to bring but that will only be met with a "come to the orientation meeting."

You go to the orientation meeting, you're told the program's objectives, you're told what you need to proceed to the next steps to get your voucher and then you're assigned a case worker.

God, the words "case worker" have absolutely triggered me.

Once you're assigned a case worker, you are told to bring in all of the necessary paperwork so your application can be processed.

At the time, a part of your application process was to have a resume and if you weren't a college graduate, you had to take a basic skills test.

My caseworker had my resume (so I didn't have to go to the mandatory resume writing class) and my official transcript from my alma matter.

No basic skills test for me.

Or so I thought.

So I'm clear, let me give you the list of what was needed to complete a WIA application at the time:
2 (or 3) yrs of tax returns
The corresponding W2's
Resume
College transcript
Name of program your applying for & the training center

I should have known this was going to be a marathon and not a sprint when my first caseworker kept on losing my official transcript.

When you're unemployed, paying for bus fare much less official transcripts can be a burdensome expense. Doing it over and over is downright expensive.

But I learned to keep a stash of them because of the incompetence of my first caseworker.

As this process drug on, it proved to be a wise move.

Once I schlepped back to give my caseworker the "missing" transcript, my application was complete. The next step is that it needed to go the whomever the high up was for processing and the final approval.

I was told to check back in a few weeks (3?, 4? 8?) and I should have my approvals and be tracked for a voucher.

Naturally, it couldn't have been that easy.

Why? Because my first caseworker left.

And when she left her file got "lost." So I had to start all over with a new caseworker.

But the fun twist with this one is that not only did she keep on misplacing my transcript but also my resume.

God bless her, she kept on trying to drag me into resume writing and the basic skills courses despite the numerous transcripts and resumes I continually gave her.

In retrospect, I honestly think they were trying to delay me getting my voucher.

Because after getting in all of required paperwork AGAIN, I was told to sit and wait.

You know what happened next, right?

My second caseworker left.

It took awhile for me to get my third. And when I say awhile I mean over three months.

Or was it four?

Naturally, all of my paperwork was lost----AGAIN. So I had to start over for a third time with my application.

So I did.

The WIA program received my application & supporting paperwork for a third time. Now all I had to do was wait for the approval and get my voucher.

By the time my full application was received for consideration, WIA had run out of grant money for that funding cycle.

If my memory serves me correctly, because I very well could be getting it wrong, it was over six months before any new money was released. Longer before the program became funded again.

By this time, I was living off a patchwork of loans from friends, sporadic temporary corporate gigs, unemployment and government assistance.

It was horrible.

So I soldiered on. And in the process got a ITIL certification as I cobbled together money to live.