Aged pension parasites?

Dorice has worked all of her life in low-paying jobs – particularly part-time or casual jobs in between raising a family and caring for elderly parents – believing all of that time that the taxes she paid, and the contribution she made towards society would be rewarded in later life with an aged pension, so it was a rude shock and a total humiliation for her to be treated like a parasite, a blood-sucking leech on society, when she actually reached pension age and applied for what she believed was her right under the social contract.

“It’s not enough these days to raise a family, put your kids through college, take care of your elderly parents until they pass on and pay off your mortgage before you, yourself, get old,” sighs Dorice. “Apparently, it’s now expected that we should all have saved enough to take care of ourselves in old age, too!”

“This is the distinct impression I gained when I applied for my aged pension recently,” says Dorice, “and corroborates what I’ve been hearing in the news about people my age having to sell their homes in order to support themselves in old age.”

“First up, I was totally intimated by all the paperwork I had to deal with and the invasive questions asked,” says Dorice, “but that was nothing compared to the humiliation I suffered at the actual interview at the pensions office.”

“I was kept waiting about an hour and then a woman appeared, looking at least 70 years old if not older, whose job, it seemed, was to humiliate me deliberately.”

“Having been hassled for much of my last twenty years in the workforce by the young things, telling me I was far too old to be working,” laughs Dorice, “you can appreciate my having the exact same sentiments about this woman.”

“Does the pensions office employ old people to put us oldies at ease, or to make us feel guilty that we’re applying for a pension when they, the poor pensions office staff, have to work one foot in the grave so to speak?”

“Well, her attitude towards me solved that mystery for me,” laughs Dorice. “Her job definitely wasn’t to put me at ease. It was to humiliate me every which way she could.”

“At one point in the interview I felt like telling her -- ‘look, lady, I’m here because I worked in the real world, in a real job, where someone is considered old at 40 and nobody wants to employ me any more, and you’ve got no right to be treating me like a welfare parasite when people like you, in comfy jobs and with generous pensions plans paid from my taxes, are the real parasites’ – but I buttoned my lips.”

“I wondered if she had ever had children to support, elderly parents to take care of and a mortgage to pay off – whatever, she was lucky to have a cushy public service job and no pressure on her to retire.”

“I came out of that pensions office as angry as I could be,” says Dorice, “and when I told other people about my experience they said that they’d experienced similar humiliation, so it wasn’t a one-off thing. It’s a deliberate ploy by the pensions office to make us feel like welfare parasites.”

“There was I thinking how proud I was to have lived a socially responsible life – raising kids, putting them through college, taking care of my parents, paying off the mortgage and never once asking the state for any sort of assistance,” says Dorice, “and then I’m more or less told that I’m a leech, a welfare parasite, when I apply for what I believed is my right.”

“I can understand, now, why all the smart women don’t have kids – or put them straight into a crèche after birth – dump their elderly parents onto the state to care for when they become a burden, and lumber their kids with an education debt rather than paying for their kids’ college themselves,” sighs Dorice. “They knew, but I didn’t, that when you’re old and grey and nobody wants to employ you that every day you missed at work to care for someone else, and every penny you spent on others rather than put into your retirement savings account, spared you from becoming an aged pension parasite.”

“I cannot be the only idiot who honestly didn’t know that aged pensions were considered to be welfare payments,” says Dorice, “and a whole lot of the younger Boomers coming up behind me are in for a huge shock.”