Earlier this year a scathing Senate report said the Jobactive scheme – the government’s employment service – had unleashed a “bureaucratic nightmare” on jobseekers.

Welfare groups said out-of-work Australians were “suffering” under the Coalition’s $7.3bn program, which has its roots in the Howard government’s outsourcing of employment services in 1998.

Since then the system has grown and evolved into a network of 1,700 providers across Australia, with companies competing for public money and the right to triage some 750,000 unemployed people on Newstart into a series of government schemes with questionable outcomes such as Work for the Dole, ParentsNext and the PaTh Program.

Guardian Australia spoke to six people about their experiences dealing with Jobactive providers.

Wendy Morgan, 58, Adelaide

It was my birthday recently. I turned 58. I have a 40-year work history and a bachelor of science with a double major in physics and chemistry, plus a string of other qualifications. I even have a forklift licence, and used to run the quality testing lab at the factory where I worked for eight years before it closed in 2012.

According to my Jobactive provider, none of it happened. All they see is my age.

When I became unemployed it was unexpected, and despite my confidence I struggled. Everywhere I applied said I was too qualified and they’d have to pay me too much. When I started going to these providers, my 20-something caseworker suggested I should simply delete my qualifications from my resume.

And just like that, at the push of a button, my whole working life was erased.

Afterwards they started shunting me into jobs for which I was unsuited. They made me take cleaning jobs, even though I had arthritis. Once a caseworker asked me whether I had any retail experience. In 40 years I had not worked a day in retail but she said she had found the job for me and moved the screen around so I could see it. It was a job in sales. Up the top it said in big, bold letters that applicants must have a minimum of five years’ retail experience. She even bought me interview clothes that didn’t fit.

If I didn’t go to the interview my payments would have been cut, so I went along anyway in my clothes that didn’t fit to explain why I was applying for a job I was entirely unqualified for.

I keep getting into trouble because I won’t use their version of my resume. They say I’m not allowed to and that I have to show proof of my qualifications. So I take in my university degree – I’ve got it framed – I take the whole thing in there and say, “Look, this is my university degree and my forklift licence,” and they still don’t put it on to the system.

And then at the next appointment I’ll have another new 20-year-old caseworker who I have to explain myself to once more because there’s nothing on the system. When I finish she says she doesn’t believe me and threatens to cut off my payments if I don’t do what she says.

That’s it. You’re treated like a child by a child in an infinite loop, constantly afraid they’ll cut off your payments again and you’ll fall behind on your bills.

Anonymous, 49, Perth

Once you’re in the system you’re completely at the mercy of any person who is incompetent or has a grudge. You cope with gallows humour. Dealing with the Jobactive provider reminds me of those old Asterix comics where the Gauls had to navigate their way around the Roman bureaucracy. They’d go up to one window and be told, no, you have to go to Room 1. At Room 1, they’d be told they actually had to go to Room 2.

I’ve been cut off Centrelink so many times I’ve lost count. It’s mostly because of the soaring incompetence of the people running the system. If they don’t want to deal with you, or a person with an attitude decides you’re a “non-compliant person”, they send you to Centrelink out of spite.

The last time I was cut off, I was sent to do a Work for the Dole activity at a place ironically called “People Who Care”. We were doing busywork. It was terribly run. Twice they lost my paperwork but instead of losing my shit I politely asked whether they might take a look in their desk drawer.

So later you get a text – they send you this text message to say you have been cut off because you haven’t attended your work appointment. But I had. It turned out they had two separate managers on each day who hadn’t bothered to do the paperwork. Apparently everyone who was there on those two days got cut off.

This is pretty normal. Other people I know will get cut off if they’re five minutes late to call their Jobactive provider. I’ve been cut off because I’ve called at the right time and the phone has been busy so it goes to message bank. Five minutes later I’ll get a text message saying “You’ve been cut off because you haven’t reported in.” So you call them back and then you get admonished because you didn’t call at the correct time. Or they say they were on the phone.

So then I ask: “If you knew I was going to call, why were you on the phone?”

I don’t blame them though. All the people working in these places are just poor assholes who are just stuck in the same system. The person sitting on the other side of the desk from me in these places, that person could be me. They could end up on the side of the desk that I’m sitting on. And that’s what they’re scared of.

Anonymous, 32, South Australia

My strange experience with a Jobactive provider happened back in November 2015. It was a week of pure, concentrated weirdness.

The provider found me a job with a charity. They handled everything. My case manager even took the picture for the photo ID.

There was a man who handled what limited training there was by phone. The day after, I had a trial shift. I had to collect money door-to-door with no information about what the charity actually did, who ran it or what the money we were raising was for – only that it was for children in the Philippines.

The leaflets they gave us to hand out were about cancer, copied and pasted from Wikipedia, even though the charity was supposedly about education. When I spoke to people I couldn’t even answer basic questions. And people were still generous. A blind man gave me $20. It was absurd and awful.

When I asked my point of contact questions, he grew frustrated and aggressive with me. He told me to look on the website but it was just pictures of kids with vague descriptions; no programs, no initiatives. It’s been taken down since, but the mission statement was just a copy of the tax definition of a charity.

I looked up as much as I could about the company. I found the names associated with it had run similar charities that had been exposed as frauds by the ABC. These names weren’t on the website or any training materials. [This charity] didn’t have anything a normal charity had.

I didn’t know what to do, so I reported this to the ACCC and even made a police report. When I told my caseworker, they tried to make me keep doing the job. They told me they’d had their office look it up and that the charity was properly registered, but anyone can register for a business name. I read charities have a year before they’re audited.

When my questions about how the collected money was spent still weren’t answered, the case manager called my point of contact. That’s when they agreed that something wasn’t right and that I didn’t have to do it any more. They joked nervously about ending up on A Current Affair.

A few weeks later I had another appointment and my case manager casually mentioned that another client was still collecting money for [the charity]. She knew they were shonky and still nothing had been done.

Todd Taranto, 27, West Gippsland

Everything, I should say, started out fine. I’m on the disability support pension, so when I was placed with the Jobactive provider I found the people there lovely and I was actually hopeful I may get a job. But I live in West Gippsland and there isn’t much work here. I had no bites or anything.

So six months in the Jobactive people started enrolling me in these mini job classes. They include things like interview prep, the different qualifications needed for a job, and were basically pointless. They were there to make it look like we were doing something. I was there two or three times a week to keep me occupied. And I did that for six weeks.

At that time the case managers I dealt with kept changing as the company restructured. I went through three of them and eventually ended up with a disability consultant who suggested I look at doing a Certificate V in business and retail. It was supposed to be six months of doing two hours a week online.

Todd Taranto speaks to The Guardian about his personal experience with Centrelink. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

I agreed because it was better than jumping through their other hoops. I already had a bachelor in communications and an advanced diploma in business studies, so I thought this might be another qualification to add to my CV. But after the first few units, I realised I had already held a higher level qualification in the same area, so I already knew everything. When I later went through a period of unwellness, they allowed me to take a week or two off and I spoke to the consultant off-the-cuff. That’s when she said she wouldn’t have recommended I do the course. They basically let me waste my time for about six months.

Then, at the end of 2018, I had a letter from Centrelink saying that it was worse than that: I wasn’t required to attend appointments with a Jobactive provider at all. I didn’t believe it at first, but then someone from Centrelink rang me to explain I was officially considered a “volunteer”. They said I could continue going to appointments and looking for work if I wanted to, but then I’d have to sign a contract which would lock me in.

I thought something was wrong or there had been a mistake. The next time I went into the provider and spoke to my consultant, I told her about the phone call. We laughed about it because we agreed Centrelink must have made a mistake. Of course I was supposed to be here. I’d been going to appointments for nearly two years.

About a minute or two, she stopped, looked something up on her computer and told me Centrelink actually had it right: I didn’t need to be there at all. I’d spent two years of my life jumping through hoops for no reason.

Anonymous, 27, South Australia

I recently went for a pre-interview phone call at a Jobactive provider where I had to explain I worked for five years managing Work for the Dole before quitting. A series of unrelated life events forced a mental health crisis and a hospitalisation. Now I’m on Newstart to supplement my income while I start a business. It’s hard and embarrassing, especially as I know just how powerless you are as a job seeker.

The whole system is broken, on both ends. I have so many stories from when I managed the Work for the Dole program. One that really affected me involved a client who was sent to work at a golf club. While on the job, he fell off some scaffolding that wasn’t set up correctly and landed on his face. He had to be hospitalised and the breakages caused him breathing difficulties and disfiguration. That was really horrible and I took that guilt home with me after realising there was no support for him.

I think Work for the Dole is like slave labour. There was no food provided for those doing the activities and people had to bring their own lunch. The subsidy for getting to the activity was an extra $20.80 a fortnight. To my knowledge this hasn’t changed since 1997. You’re essentially getting a bunch of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds doing work that is often quite degrading. Meanwhile they are working for free for organisations that are making money off them. When I worked there, each individual placement was worth $1,000, or $3,500 for “training” activities. That money gets paid by the government to the organisation.

Looking back on it, my family says that working [as a Work for the Dole manager] in my early 20s made me jaded. There were too many times I had people crying on the phone, saying they didn’t have money for food and I was forced by law to say, “Well, you didn’t meet your mutual obligation, we have to notify Centrelink.” Even if you go in wanting to help people, the system doesn’t let you. Over time, one of two things happen: you either harden your heart and become a robot, or you take your work home with you and have a breakdown.

Anonymous, 29, Northern Territory

Last year Centrelink put me on the ParentsNext program. Dealing with them has been really frustrating as I’m not supposed to be on this program. I’m a mother of two children and I was studying and working when they put me on it.

At first I thought I would go in and report to them and that was it. The lady I was going through at the Jobactive provider made my appointments once every two months at the start. Then about two or three weeks ago, I had a new consultant who said I shouldn’t be on that program at all. They said I was working too much. Someone at Centrelink though decided I didn’t have a job, even though I’ve been working at the same organisation for the past two years for pay. That’s when Centrelink wanted to make me start looking for 10 jobs a week.

After that, Centrelink started bringing me in for appointments with my Jobactive provider more often. During the middle of a work day, I would have to tell my boss, “Sorry, but I have to leave to go to these appointments.” My boss was supportive and wrote me a letter to try to help, which I showed the Jobactive people, but it didn’t change anything.

When I spoke to someone from Centrelink about it over the phone, they said the rules meant I had to look for 10 jobs. When I told them I wouldn’t, they said I had to. I said to them: “You don’t own me. I don’t care. I’m my own person.”

The case manager I deal with at the Jobactive is good though and can see I shouldn’t be there, so she’s started calling me via the phone so I don’t have to go in. I’m trying to get off ParentsNext now but Centrelink won’t let me leave. Last week I was told to provide 13 weeks of payslips to exit the ParentsNext program. More paperwork.

It’s like when I talk, they don’t listen.

The unnamed contributors to this story are known to the journalist and asked to remain anonymous

Reporting in this series is supported by VivCourt through the Guardian Civic Journalism Trust