Don't try to make the bureaucracy care because fundamentally like bureaucracies do not have feelings, but they are made up of humans who have feelings.

And so what you want to give the bureaucracy is what the process needs to move forward.

Welcome to how to. I'm Amanda Ripley. We've all been there, lost in some kind of diabolical bureaucracy,

dealing with a chatbot or a line at the DMV or sitting on hold with your insurance company for hours.

For this week's listener, their battle with the bureaucratic void started in the early days of the

pandemic.

My name's Gwen.

I filed for unemployment, but I haven't received the money.

And I have all this logged information that says I received money that I didn't receive.

And it's messed up a lot of my stuff,

like my tax returns and all sorts of stuff.

Could you tell us what was going on that led you to initially apply for unemployment?

Well, when the pandemic started, I worked at a brewery and we closed down, so I didn't have any income.

And were you worried about paying the rent or what was foremost on your mind?

Yeah, rent, my car insurance.

I was also paying off my car at the time, my cell phone and just like my health insurance

because I pay for that on my own.

Faced with all these very real expenses, Gwen did what her coworkers were doing.

She filed for unemployment, which was something a lot of people were doing.

One in four workers relied on unemployment during the pandemic.

And for most of them, this was a lifesaver.

But for some unlucky few who got caught in the maze of the bureaucracy, it made things

...