I have been registered unemployed three times in my life. The first was in the month after university in 1992 whilst I lived back in my mother’s house in England. I would receive my unemployment cheque every second week and on the ensuing Friday it was duly spent on a bottle of tequila, some lemons and one or two cans of super strength lager.

I shared this ritual with an old school friend, also freshly back in town having also graduated that summer. First, the tequila at home (much to the bemusement of our mothers) then, “tinnies” on the beach, and finally the pub, or pubs, depending on who was in town or “back from uni”.

My friend was also unemployed during this initial month but happily he received his cheque on alternate weeks. Although we were largely skint during this period, having maxed out our overdrafts from the student bank accounts now that we had graduated, it meant we were at least guaranteed one piss up a week.

The second time was at the start of 1994 – this time in London – after leaving my previous job just before Christmas the year before.  Again, it was only a month because by February I was back working, this time in London clubland. This continued until 1997 when I swapped cutting edge music, alcopops and some very late nights, for the epicentre of life quality, a big book of English grammar and something called the Sprachinstiut.

Getting a footing as a business English trainer took a few months but by the end of that year my reputation was enough to have regular work and a regular income. So much so that since that time, first as a freelancer splashing my wares around the various language schools, then one year full-time employment, and finally as the master of my own destiny as a one-man company and all of the advantages this implied (no boss), I have been in regular work.

The third time I registered was in May 2026 in Vienna. In the months leading up to this decision, I had been struggling to generate enough work to cover my social insurance and pay my bills. Things were complicated by the loss of my largest client (a client of 25 years) but as a global company they finally decided to opt for a global supplier for language learning – an online portal with all the bells and whistles that this entails (and according to my spies still inside, universally hated).

But there were also other factors at play, mostly to do with demographics. In that since Covid, more of my long-term clients had retired or downsized from managerial duties (thus losing funding for English coaching) and it has been largely impossible to replace them.

I feel the reason for this has little to do with the roll-out of AI (sorry, Sam Altman). No, my hunch is that it has something much more benign to do with hominoid existence: good old-fashioned human-to-human teaching and learning in schools. In other words, anyone under 40 in Austria who has made it through the school system as far as the Matura – the equivalent of A levels –will these days speak excellent English. Those who have gone on to university, even more so. And so, when bosses sit down to decide where to spend money on training, it doesn’t take a particularly high-IQ president to figure out that English practice among Millennials and Gen Z isn’t necessarily going to be high on the priority list. And hence my dilemma.

So, after much deliberation, I decided to call it day on thirty years as a five-star English concierge and register as Artbeitslos (unemployed). Of course, it is possible to do all of this online through a portal called “Mein AMS” (the AMS stands for Arbeistsmaktservice) but every time I tried to register and login an error messaged flashed up with the words “Brexit means Brexit”. So instead, I headed to the unemployment office for my district, inserted my social security card into a machine, took a numbered ticket and then sat in a room with people of all nationalities and stared at a screen waiting to be “pinged”. 

After about twenty minutes I was summoned into a room to be greeted by a man sat behind two computer screens. These screens were positioned in such a way that you had to sit to the side of the desk, but it gave the impression that he was trying to hide from you. However, undeterred I sat down and fielded his first question: Bitte? This essentially translates as “Yes?” and the tone – suitably terse and slightly passive-aggressive – was a quick reminder that life quality doesn’t always include civility and any sense of a smile.

In any case I was linguistically thrown for a moment because I was sure I was sitting in the office of an employee of the employment office on the floor dedicated to new claims for unemployment. And so call me picky but in my mind the reason was self-evident: to register as unemployed.

Naturally, given my number one value on the “character strengths test” (honesty) and mindful that I could use the chance to practice for impending interviews, I was tempted to respond with: “Oh, nothing special. I just thought I could spend my morning hanging out in the unemployment office, answering stupid questions, because apparently I am a FUCKING WAPPLA”.

Happily, however, system 2 brain dutifully reminded me that it was probably best in the circumstances to just state the obvious, yet sobering truth, and simply reveal that although I still might be a Wappla, I was here to officially register as a new member of the useless class and could I have some money please?

I handed over my credentials and after some quick taps on the keyboard, the answer was swift and damming. No, I didn’t qualify for Arbeitslosgeld (unemployment benefit), even if I asked politely. But I have been paying nearly a third of my income for nearly three decades to my social insurance Ponzi scheme for the self-employed, freelance and other gig workers of the number one city, I insisted. Yes, but you have not been paying the unemployment insurance part, he replied. What unemployment insurance part? Alongside the health and pension insurance there is also another 2% fee to hedge against coming to speak to bastards like me, he continued.

For the second time in a minute, I was thrown. Since self-employment I have had a highly competent tax advisor file my tax returns and she had never mentioned this. Indeed, neither had the SVS (the social insurance company) although I now suspect they don’t want to mention the possibility of unemployment because it would undermine their business model of keep them working and paying (a similar philosophy since copied by the tech giants to keep people on their platforms).

So, what do I do, I asked? You can still fill out all the paperwork and make an application, I was told, but I don’t think you qualify. But I am still eligible for health and pension insurance, I croaked? Oh no, he replied, for that you would need to go over there to that building (he gestured out of the window over his shoulder) and make a claim for “emergency assistance”. But this is contingent on any assets and whether your Austrian wife is going to disown you or not.

At this point, sensing my impending sense of resignation, his tone softened slightgly. So much so, that he set me up on “MeinAMS” with a special password and then organised a follow up appointment a week later to an advisor about turbo charging my career. A mandatory date, unemployment money or no unemployment money.

And so in the next instalment we shall explore what it means to search for a job in the number one city, alongside the joy of updating a 30-year-old CV, doom scrolling through the job websites and being rejected from every conceivable position for reasons which have still not been explained.  In the meantime, it’s tequila slammers and soul searching. And the existential question of our time: how the buggery did it come to this?

Ps – “Rock and Roll” is cockney for “dole” – unemployment benefit. Or for our American cousins, welfare. For clarity, “cockney” is currently not included alongide my German B1/B2 in my CV under the “other languages” section.

© RJBarratt 2026