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LIKE many young working-class people who couldn’t decide what they want to do with their life, I’ve signed on .

Channel 4’s latest Dispatches programme focusing on the Department for Work and Pensions and their callous ­attitudes to jobseekers doesn’t surprise me one bit.

Over the last few years the focus of the Jobcentre switched from getting you a job to getting you off benefits by any means possible.

If you’re unlucky, and get a bad adviser, the Jobcentre can make you ill. It’s debilitating to be berated for not finding work when the labour market has been gutted from the bottom up.

When you add in the rhetoric flung around by the right-wing press demonisation of the ­unemployed as a convenient distraction from real problems – it’s a recipe for self-loathing.

I was always glad to get an early-morning appointment because it meant I wouldn’t be walking about feeling sick with dread all day.

Ask anyone who has been on jobseekers’ allowance or a similar benefit and they’ll tell you how soul-destroying Jobcentres can be.

It’s true that there are many chancers, who complain about the hoops they are made to jump through, which are actually pretty reasonable – look for jobs and record/bring evidence in to prove that you have. Fair enough.

My main issue in the combined two years that I signed on was the way I was treated by staff. ­Attitudes ranged from thinly-veiled contempt and accusations I was lying, to ill-informed advice on looking for work from staff who seemed painfully out of touch.

Not once did a Jobcentre employee know what I was talking about when I mentioned my LinkedIn profile (it’s OK if you don’t know what that is. You don’t work for DWP).

My adviser once asked if he could use my CV as a template for other jobseekers. Flattering, yes, but didn’t they have access to ­something better than a ­document flung together by a 21-year-old?

I let my brother-in-law use it. An adviser at the same Jobcentre told him it was terrible and criticised him for using colour in it.

I’ve been given a dressing down for arriving one minute late but advisers are happy to keep you waiting for 20 minutes while they gossip with their colleagues.

God help you if you look idle waiting for your adviser. You’ll be shepherded off to the Job Points – giant, clunky, poorly-calibrated touchscreens with the same cleaning and marketing jobs repeated over and over.

Filtering your search doesn’t work, and you’re directed to jobs in England, and even Europe.

I found it frustrating to be paired with an adviser who would type with two fingers and invite me for “appointments” which consisted of five minutes of ­pointless job talk and half an hour of even more pointless small talk.

It was pointless to cut this adviser off, because any attempt to speak to them on an adult level can be punished with the ­withdrawal of money.

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I did meet some good advisers. I had some good advice, kind words and was treated with respect by them. But it felt like they were in the minority. What power they had was limited by the outdated system and rules behind them.

I was once pressured by an adviser into signing up for their online job match service. He made it sound like it was necessary and that I was being unreasonable and ­paranoid for not wanting to give them my email address. Turns out the service was optional.

It summed up the Jobcentre for me – stringent enforcement of rules handed down that not even the adviser understands. Not to mention the stress of being forced into something pointless.

It’s important to try and take something positive from every negative experience. I’m back at college now and haven’t been to the Jobcentre for two years.

Perversely, the experiences I’ve had at the hands of the DWP gives me the drive to “pull myself up by my bootstraps” and succeed.

The pangs of sinking dread, bureaucratic obfuscation and ineptitude of the staff make me never want to go back there.

I’m resilient. The people I feel sorry for are those who aren’t, and are battered into submission and poverty by this out-of-touch, lumbering oaf of an organisation.