It is clear the unemployment compensation system is set up to discourage the weak.

Yes, my state has a nifty online service that lets you do all sorts of things…. except correct a mistake. I made one tiny error on my initial claim and just spent a full week trying to rectify it.

An interesting feature of the UC phone system here is that if too many people are already on hold, you get dumped off the line. The system just hangs up. Click. Try again, sucker.

Thus it can take you 10 tries — actually it took me 12 — to even get put on hold waiting for a rep.

I finally got in the queue. Thirty minutes went by, during which I was glad I am a journalist and accustomed to reading mails, writing letters, cooking lunch, etc. while on hold.

I finally got a woman on the line who told me that to fix my error, I would essentially have to fake out the system. As she explained it, there was no mechanism for fixing the particular mistake I had made. Instead, I would have to call another number, fill out an automated form, then wait for the system to connect me with a specialist to “change any information” in my application. Sigh.

I answered about 30 questions by pressing 9 for yes and 6 for no. You think they’d assume you get the drill after the first couple of questions. But no, they repeat the directions every time: “If yes, press 9. If no, press 6.”

And you can’t enter a response until the computer voice is done talking. It’s like getting UC from Catholic nuns.

Finally, after all those 9s and 6s (and a whole new perspective on that Hendrix song), I reached this magical person I could change my error. Ninety seconds later, I was done.

It worked. Only took two hours.

Now I have to call back all the people who called while I was on the phone. Good thing we have caller ID….