Matt Weinstock

March 12, 1958

More people than usual are collecting their unemployment insurance and inevitably new pressures are added to a transaction that is always difficult--handing out public money. And so complaints are reverberating.

A woman who worked steadily for four years at an aircraft factory was recently laid off and has been collecting her compensation.

She has been cashing the vouchers at a bank. Recently, under the new policy of cashing them at the unemployment office, she presented her slip for an OK.

The clerk pointed out severely that her card hadn't been stamped for two months, indicating that she had not been interviewed for employment possibilities as required.

The woman replied truthfully that no one had told her the stamp was necessary.

The clerk went into a tirade and called the manager who, after scrutiny, approved it.

The woman went a couple of windows down the line and came under the glare of another clerk who sullenly checked it and finally cashed it.

The woman has become so intimidated she now fears Friday, the day she gets her check.

She is not alone. In fact there's quite a chorus of jobless people who resent the implication that everyone who collects unemployment compensation is a chiseler.

Unfortunately a few are and they make it tough on the others.

DID YOU HEAR about the man who came home without his pay because he'd been taken in a poker game? His wife grabbed a rolling pin and said, "Lead me to your taker."

INSTEAD OF PAYMENT, Pacific Telephone received this note from a subscriber on East Adams Boulevard:

"My mother is out of the city. Will pay Feb. 13 bill as soon as she comes back within a week. I fargot and spent the money for a baseball glove to warm up far the dodger.

Billy

P.S.: I will pay her back when she gives my allounce. I won't ever do it again. Thank you."

QUOTE & UNQUOTE -- Paul Drus catches himself singing softly, "Oh where, oh where, did our satellite go? Oh where, oh where can it be?" ... Phil Girten saw this sign on Van Ness Avenue Monday, "Silky Sullivan for Mayor" ... Ruth Shartel of Glendale says we really shouldn't condemn the sack dress, it's the comedy relief for the hectic times we live in ... Joe E. Brown, emcee at the Hollywood Women's Press Club clambake for gents of the press yesterday, thanked the gals for their efforts in his behalf. "I've never complained when they wrote something about me that wasn't so," he confided, "because they have said so many wonderful things about me that weren't true I guess it evened things up."

AT RANDOM -- No question about it, the Detroit chrome boys are belatedly concerned about the foreign car invasion. Loran Smith, who acquired a Renault six months ago, received a four-page questionnaire from the National Research Institute there asking why he bought it and if he had it to do over again would he and so on ... The Animal Regulation Department report for February lists the year's first mole and seal bites ... Observes Frank Goldberg: The worst thing that could happen to the Indian is for the Lone Ranger to get married ... A passenger remarked to Betty Dixon, driver of a Beverly Boulevard bus, "Don't you think L.A. people are about the most inconsiderate you ever saw?" "On the contrary," replied Betty, "I've driven buses all over the country--I do it on my vacations sometimes--and I'd say people here are the best behaved anywhere." So there.