Trying to keep the faith

This week was very... trying... On Tuesday I went to get food stamps and everything about the experience was horrible. The building is located in a sort of warehouse district and there are buildings lettered A-J. I didn't know what building I was looking for so I drove around and finally saw a sign that said "building B Department of Human Services Food Stamps Office" and pointed me in the direction. I went that way and it ended up being a creepy dead end with no building B in sight. I turned around and went the other way and found the building. I parked and walked up to the only door and it was locked. I started to panic because now I was late for my appointment. I saw a woman walking and stopped her to ask if she knew where I should go. Here's our conversation:
Me: "Excuse me, but I'm really lost and I was wondering if you could help me?"
Her: (slight look of confusion and annoyance) "Sure"
Me: "I'm looking for the Department of Human Services"
Her: "What?"
Me: (as she comes closer I see that she's wearing a name tag... for the Department of Human Services) "I'm looking for the Department of Human Services"
Her: (looking more confused) "What?"
Me: (I pull out the letter I got from them saying when my appointment is) "I'm looking for the Department of Human Services"
Her: "What?" (looks at the letter) "Oh the food stamp office. Walk up that hill and go to the front of this building" (I look and its definitely NOT building B... stupid sign)

I enter the building and don't know really where to go so I stop at the security desk. The officer looks at me and says "Go stand in line" and points. I walk to the line and see a sign that says "Wait at the sign for next available window" so I stand at the sign. I look around and notice signs all over saying "Make one line" and "You could wait up to 2 hours before we call your name" So I stand there and a line starts to form behind me and then next to me... Confusion... Then I eventually just jump in front of the guy that started the second line because I was there first. I tell the lady at the window that i have an appointment and I hand her my letter. She snatches it out of my hand and says "go sit down." so I turn around and see the rest of the room. There are rows and rows of chairs all filled with people. I sent a text to Tracy saying "hmm.. I think I grossly misunderstood how long this will take"...

An hour and 15 minutes later (didn't matter that we all had appointments...) my name gets called. I go to the sign in desk and stood there. The officer didn't acknowledge me at all so I thought that maybe I had to just sign my name. I picked up the pen and she snapped at me "and who are you?" I told her my name and she said "well was your name called?" I told her yes and she said "well I need to see some ID" So I gave her my ID and she looked at it and then said "write your name" so I wrote my name and she sent me through. I met my social worker and she walked me to her cube. I sat down and realized that the computer screen was directly between me and the social worker. She started asking me questions and I was thinking "Seriously? I'm supposed to talk to the back of this computer screen?" so I moved my chair over. The appointment went fine even though she was not very friendly at all. She told me I only qualified for $40 a month. My heart just dropped. Here I am a GOVERNMENT VOLUNTEER which means that I'm not technically employed so my income is technically 0 and the government wouldn't even give me assistance. I went and sat in my car and cried for about 15 minutes. I was just so overwhelmed. I was scared that I'm not gonna be able to make it, but mostly I was angry. It was seriously that white hot anger too. I had finally experienced "the system" and my eyes were opened. I felt degraded and had been looked at like I was worthless. People have to go through this on a regular basis and I only went through it once and it sucked. The people that need this assistance are people who have jobs and maybe some of them have bosses who are not understanding and maybe some of them have jobs that don't give out pto but all of them are made to sit there for HOURS and lose time from work and losing time means losing money and they're struggling as it is. And what the heck is the point of having an appointment when they just make you wait for 2 hours anyway. It made me so incredibly angry that here we (meaning the U.S. in general) trying to fix every other country when ours is so incredibly broken. I lost all faith in our government's ability to take care of it's own. I lost faith in voting because no one will fix the issue that I am now really passionate about and even if they say they're going to there is not enough time in a term to fix anything. Nothing ever gets done. America, this land of "opportunity" really kind of sucks. That day I was working at the office (to get a break from the school cause yikes) and I went to let my boss know that I was there and I ended up bursting into tears in her office. She was very gracious and understanding about it. She knows that I'm a long way from home and that everything is so overwhelming. She let me know that if I ever need a break from the school and the teachers to let her know and she'll set me up with Red Cross for a day or something so that I can breathe. The rest of the day was awesome because the other Americorps members were there and there was a lot of laughter and just being together is always fun. On Friday my boss texted me to ask me if I'd like to work at a water festival this Wed to get a break from the school. I'm really glad that she did that cause that school just sucks the life out of Tracy and I. So I have something to look forward too luckily...