SPOKANE, Wash. — For some people, the wait for unemployment benefits is reaching week 13 as hundreds of thousands of people continue to make claims after being laid off or losing their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
One of those people is Ryan Sheenan, who worked as a cook at Players and Spectators before the pandemic. He was laid off on March 16.
"Thirteen weeks from March 16, was the day I was laid off. They unfortunately came in and said," 'We're closed until further notice due to COVID'," he said.
Since then, Sheenan said he has been constantly thrown back and forth between his standby request being denied and approved.
"Since then, I was given a chance to go into standby phase, where I didn't have to look for work. And then I got approved for standby, then I got denied for standby, then I got approved again," Sheenan said. "I got two of the same letters, one said I got approved, one said I got denied, on the same day."
"I just get caught in the loop," he added.
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Sheenan said that he has made more claims since then, but the last time his account had been viewed by the state was on April 14.
He also said he had reached out to the Washington Employment Security Department for what felt like "a million times."
"They'll give me another number, and then I'll call that and they'll say we're not answering unemployment questions at this time," Sheenan said.
He added that he also can't get a call back from someone to answer questions. Despite calls multiple times a day starting in the morning, he said he hasn't heard from the department.
"They've never reached out to me, and I'm calling them everyday," Sheenan said. "Seven a.m., 8 a.m., 9 a.m., 10 a.m., multiple times."
Sheenan said that this has caused frustration from his family, who are "trying our hardest to stay on our feet."
"It's hard enough to take care of ourselves right now, that we can't even go out and help our neighbors or our other members of our community," he said.
While he has been dealing with applying for unemployment benefits, Sheenan said he wants to be back at work, and sometimes feels attacked since he hasn't been able to return to his job.
"I'm a man, and I want to work. And I feel like sometimes I get attacked because we are sitting at home waiting on an unemployment check," he said. "It's embarrassing, it is embarrassing."
Sheenan is far from the only person experiencing frustrations amid delays in unemployment benefits, and he said he feels the system has "failed."
"There is no reason that anybody should be waiting 13, 14, 15 weeks for unemployment, even a month, for an answer from unemployment," he said
He said he also empathizes with others who have struggled to get their benefits as they remain out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"I am not the only one. There are others just like me that are struggling just to get by," he said."