‘Overwhelming, frustrating and stressful’ describe the Kansas unemployment process
More than 182,000 Kansas residents have filed an initial unemployment claim in the past month.
But rather than receiving the much-needed lifeline during the coronavirus pandemic, many Kansans have stories to tell of frustration and desperation — trying to jump through hoops that ultimately have left them even more stressed out and, more importantly, still without money from the unemployment process.
That’s because a 3,513% year-over-year increase in internet claims has overwhelmed an outdated system in Kansas that relies on a 43-year-old mainframe computer.
It takes hours, sometimes even days, for people to get through on the phone lines. The website routinely crashes, which causes the phone lines to be inundated even more. It’s become a vicious cycle, one that Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is trying to reverse with updates to the system.
“You can’t change decades of neglect over 40 years overnight,” Kelly said in a news briefing last week.
“It has moved slowly, there is no doubt about it. It’s a very old system and it’s just been patched together. We were in the process of modernizing the system when this hit. We had some of the best technology minds in the state on the phone for 10 hours over the weekend trying to figure out a way to put together the modern system and then migrate the old system over there. But it’s sort of like repairing the plane in the air. I just have to continue to ask people to be patient and to understand. They really are doing the best they possibly can.”
But for many Kansans, patience is running out and bills are piling up.
The Eagle spoke with seven Wichita-area residents about their experience trying to file for unemployment. Here are their stories:
‘What it’s done is underscore the existing problems’
Tythan Miles, a 38-year-old Wichitan, is one of thousands of self-employed workers who now qualify to receive unemployment benefits through the federal CARES Act. And like many of them, he has grown frustrated with the lack of a timeline for when those benefits will be distributed.
Since it is a new federal program and Kansas is operating with an outdated computer system, the state can not pinpoint when the money will be ready to distributed to self-employed workers filing for unemployment.
“I’m used to calling a customer service line and receiving customer service,” Miles said. “I know they’re trying their best, but all you can do is sit and wait your turn. It’s incredibly aggravating not knowing if your claim is being filed. And more importantly, what’s the freaking timeline for how long it’s going to take before we get our money? Right now it’s just a lot of uncertainty.”
Like many others, Miles tried to file online but encountered problems with the website that forced him to call in. In preparation, he downloaded an auto-redial app on his phone. He punched in the phone number at 7:59 a.m. and waited for the second his clock hit 8 a.m. to dial. He still received a busy signal. It soon got to the point where he handed his phone over to his young daughter and gave her a $5 bill to continue pushing the button for him, while he did other things. After 118 times, he finally got through.
“And once you get through, you could end up waiting for four or five hours,” Miles said. “And that’s if you even have the privilege of being put on hold in the first place.”
The record amount of traffic the past month has overwhelmed the system, both the website and the phone lines. But Miles says he knows several people who have had problems with the system over the years, well before the pandemic hit.
“These problems have been synonymous with a crippled unemployment system well before the whole pandemic began,” Miles said. “What it’s done is underscore the existing problems. So hopefully this has brought attention to a flailing system and a broken way of serving individuals who are going through tough times. Hopefully they take a look at this and say, ‘Maybe we do need to ramp up our efforts to serve our customers.’”
‘The website is broke and people can’t trust it’
The people who are affected the most by the overwhelmed system are ones with complications on their claims like Amy Ward, a 34-year-old from Maize. She was furloughed from her job at a Marriott call center in Wichita on March 25, but she might not receive any benefits until May — all because of a complications stemming from a $200 bonus she received for her work in February.
Ward wasn’t even aware of the problem until two weeks later when she still had not received any money. When she checked her online account, nothing alerted her to an issue.
“It flashed no payments have been issued yet, but it didn’t say there was a problem either,” Ward said. “That’s how you know there’s a disconnect. There wasn’t an alert or anything. It made me think it was in a pending status. It wasn’t until 150 phone calls in the last week that now I find out there’s a problem.”
She eventually discovered her account had been suspended because of the bonus and she would need to file the proper paperwork to resolve the issue. But when Ward tried to access the website — the only place where the documents are available — it was down. She thought it might just be her computer, so she tried another laptop but had the same result.
It wasn’t until April 7 — nearly two weeks after she had stopped working — that Ward was able to file the proper paperwork to start a process that could take two to four weeks to resolve. She has since filed three weekly claims, but received no money.
“They keep referring everyone back to the website, but the website is not working,” Ward said. “When it does work for five minutes, then it crashes again. That’s why they’re being inundated with phone calls — because the website is broke and people can’t trust it.”
Ward said she knows the money will eventually come, but the thought of possibly going six weeks without any income is a scary thought for a single mother with four children to support.
“It’s not like the bills have stopped,” Ward said. “I’m still paying all the bills and it still costs money to live. So it’s really stressful thinking that it might be that long before I receive any help.”
‘I hope I don’t sneeze or it might disconnect’
Chris Kux, a 37-year-old from Wichita, was furloughed from his job as an insurance billing specialist for an optometrist three weeks ago. He tried filing his initial claim online, but ran into a roadblock because he had worked for the federal government, a post office job he left last November, in the past 18 months, which flagged his claim.
On Monday, March 28, Kux tried calling the unemployment center 809 times. He received a busy signal every time. On Tuesday, he downloaded an auto-redial app on his phone that allowed him to make even more calls. Still, no luck. It wasn’t until Wednesday — after an estimated 5,000 attempts — that Kux was able to talk with a representative.
“Mind-numbing is a good description for it,” Kux said. “You pour yourself a big cup of coffee and sit on the couch and put a movie on and hit the redial button all day. It’s like if you’ve ever gone fishing and you don’t catch anything for a really long time and you’re not really paying attention, then all of a sudden you get a bite and you don’t want to let it get away. It’s like, ‘I hope I don’t sneeze or it might disconnect.’”
Even when he finally got through, Kux said he wasn’t able to receive immediate help. Instead, he was given the option of either waiting on the line for potentially up to two and a half hours or scheduling a call-back. He opted for the latter.
He became nervous when 4:15 p.m., the closing time for the Kansas Department of Labor, passed and he still had not received a call. But he said a representative called him at 5 p.m. and was very helpful in resolving the issue.
After navigating one stressful situation, Kux found himself in another: the state could not tell him when exactly his benefits will be deposited in his back account. It could take seven to 10 business days just to receive his information, then however long it takes to make a determination.
“I’ve got two kids in another state that I support, so it’s a little nerve-racking for me to be out of money and not have any answers from anybody in a timely fashion on when the money is coming,” Kux said. “It’s like a waiting game now. I might have another two weeks of twiddling my thumbs here.”
‘I was planning my life around that and now it’s fallen through’
This was the week that Kadrae Smith, a 26-year-old Derby native, was supposed to start his job at Carnival Cruise. He was going to be doing what he loved — entertaining people — and travel the world, all while making enough money to pay off his debts.
“It really was a dream job for me,” Smith said. “I was planning my life around that and now it’s fallen through.”
The coronavirus pandemic has flipped Smith’s world upside down. It started when he was forced to abruptly move out of the guest bedroom where he was living in Wichita. Meanwhile, his start date on the cruise ship kept being pushed back. And then, to top it off, he was furloughed from the job he was making money in as a server at the Old Spaghetti Factory.
Luckily, Smith has been able to move in with his brother in Derby and has received a grace period from his car payment and debt collectors. After some finagling, he was also finally able to make his unemployment claims and has been receiving payments.
It’s been a stressful time for Smith, but he has tried to make the best of it. He says he’s been reading personal development books and finally has the time to work on an animated series he’s been trying to finish. The new time together has actually strengthened his relationship with his brother. He’s delved into TikTok and even had one video accumulate more than 200,000 views.
“I think this whole experience has really opened up a lot of eyes with the lives we were living and who we really are as people,” Smith said. “Now that we’re not working, who are we? I know I’ve been discovering things that I like about myself and also some things that I don’t. I think we’re all having more time now to slow down and really get to know each other and know ourselves better.”
‘All I can do now is cross my fingers’
Even those who tried to work ahead and be prepared to file for unemployment benefits ran into problems. Like 49-year-old Maize resident Brad Geubelle, an aircraft worker at Textron who was one of nearly 34,000 manufacturing workers in Kansas who filed for unemployment in the past three weeks.
Geubelle was able to use one week of paid vacation before going on furlough and spent that week trying to prepare his account on the website. He was eventually locked out and figured he would just call the offices the next week to sort it out.
Little did he know how difficult it would be just to unlock his account. He tried calling for an hour straight last Monday and never got through, so he gave up. The following day, he called 255 times before finally getting through for a call back. Three hours later, a representative took his claim over the phone but could not reset his password due to a glitch in the system.
As of last Friday, Geubelle still could not log into his account.
“I wrote my password down and when I enter it, it still tells me that I have the wrong password and won’t let me back in the system,” Geubelle said. “Then it says I had three failed attempts and to try back in four hours. So I tried back in four hours and it still wouldn’t let me in. All I can do now is cross my fingers that my claim went through.”
‘You feel like you’ve done everything you can possibly do’
Cody Schmidt is another unemployed worker who has found himself at the mercy of the system.
The 36-year-old Cheney native moved to Spirit Lake, Iowa, last October, but has to file for unemployment benefits in Kansas because that’s where he worked in the first and second quarter of the year. And because he worked outside of the state in the last 18 months, he’s had to spend the majority of time trying to get through the phone lines.
He estimated he called 700 times in a day the first week he tried to talk to someone. It wasn’t until his second week of trying, last Tuesday, until he finally heard another voice on the other end — and that voice told him they could only take his phone number down to have someone else call him back later.
When a representative called him back, Schmidt said he was in the middle of finalizing his account on the phone when the website crashed. The representative said they would write his information down and finish the application for him later and to try to file his first weekly claim two days later.
Thursday rolled around and Schmidt tried logging into his account, but the system was once again down and it locked him out. After 200 more calls and a few more hours waiting on hold, he was finally able to reset his password and finish his claim online. But the whole process still has Schmidt uneasy.
“You feel like you’ve done everything you can possibly do and there’s nothing left you can do, except to completely rely on the government and the system,” Schmidt said. “And in this case, that doesn’t seem to be very reliable. I won’t feel good about it until I see an actual dollar in my bank account.”
‘It’s just been incredibly overwhelming’
Isabella Gibson, a 24-year-old Wichita resident who was a bartender at Mulligan’s Pub, was one of more than 27,000 Kansans working in the food service industry who filed an unemployment claim in the last three weeks. But after three weeks of no work, she is still waiting to receive her unemployment benefits.
That’s because it took her an entire week to be able to access the website long enough to create an account, then it took her another full week before she could file her first claim. Gibson said the website wouldn’t allow her to set up direct deposit, so she was forced to pick receiving her funds on a debit card shipped to her. The card was issued on April 7, but a week later and she has yet to receive it.
“It’s just been incredibly overwhelming,” Gibson said. “I’ve never gone without a job since I was 16, so I never expected to be in this situation. And then the website doesn’t work and you don’t know what’s going to happen or when you’re going to be financially stable again. It’s pretty scary.”
Gibson’s advice to others is to remain patient and don’t give up. She admitted that was hard for her to remember the first week. But she has since come to focus on the positive side of things.
“I have to tell myself every day that this is only temporary and things are going to be OK,” Gibson said. “There are so many good things in life still. People are now getting to spend more time with their families and take care of themselves and reflecting on what they need.
“I have time now to sit outside and just relax. I never used to have the time to do that before. I guess I’d just rather look at the positive side of things instead of the negative because we have no control over that.”
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