How to jump through hoops.....

Here's a question for you. What do performing circus animals and people have in common? Other than all being mammals? Well, the title of the post does rather give it away, but in case you missed it, we all have to learn to jump through hoops. It doesn't matter whether you are on welfare or the CEO of a multi-national corporation, there are endless rows of hoops through which you have to jump on a daily basis. These hoops have generally been put in place by successive legislative bodies and are intended to serve a valid and useful purpose. They are, in the main, intended to protect society as a whole from sharp practices, fraud, illegality and so on. So the CEO is ultimately responsible for making sure that her corporation conforms to health and safety policy, or to put it another way, jumps through the health and safety hoop, to protect her workers and the wider community from the actions of her company. The welfare claimant has to provide evidence of the reason for their claim and their inability to work, again jumping through hoops, but with the purpose of protecting the national budget from un-necessary drains on resources.

For the person doing the hoop jumping, it can often seem like petty minded officiousness, and in some cases I am quite sure that it is, or if not simple officiousness, then at least excessively time consuming. It should be remembered though that there is a secondary side to this. If this hoop jumping is a pain for the person doing the jumping, imagine what it must be like for the person holding the hoop, day and day, week after week, month after month as almost every person jumping through it complains about having to do it. Imagine having to deal with complaints about a system you didn't put in place, you may not necassarily agree with, you may not even fully understand, but you have to keep holding that hoop. When you look at it from that side. perhaps having to do the jumping isn't so bad after all.

Looking at it from both sides can be useful, for one very good reason. The purpose of this post is to give you, dear reader, an insight into how to get through the maze of hoops, and the very best advice I can give is to do your absolute best to give whatever information is required. Fill in forms correctly and in the correct colour pen, when doing it by phone, remain polite and calm, give full but concise answers, and above all, be honest. It may not feel like it at the time, but by trying to help the person who has to process your hoop jump, they are far more likely to help you and reduce the number of subsequent hoops you have to navigate. Always remember that in the main these hoops have had to be created because someone, somewhere tried to play the system and lost, badly enough that the system had to retaliate and punish everyone, in the manner of the school teacher keeping the whole class in because of one disruptive student. It isn't a perfect system, it isn't necessarily fair, but working with the system rather than fighting against can pay dividends in the long run....