At the age of 67, Deborah Shanks has been supporting her mother and aunt by working at a Regal Cinemas, but once she was laid off in March, she was out thousands of dollars.
“We have three Golden Girls in the house right now,” Shanks said. “We have my aunt who is 81, my mom who is 89.”
As the state opens back up, many Floridians are eagerly going back to work, but with Shanks’ house of “Golden Girls,” she is terrified to return to the theater as she could bring the virus back to her family.
“At 89, I don’t think she’d make it through the virus,” Shanks said about her mom.
As the weeks go by, Shanks is desperate for any unemployment compensation.
“I went to Fed-Ex, filled out the paperwork, brought it back the next day and they overnighted it,” Shanks said.
Shanks waited weeks, with no response, but finally received a letter in May containing a check.
“I thought, finally, I’m in the system,” Shanks said.
In the envelope, she didn’t find two months of back pay, nor $600 federal money, just $84.
After countless calls to DEO, she says one agent told her to reenter her claimed weeks to try and get that money owed to her since March, but now a new roadblock has emerged.
“You fill it all out, you get down to the bottom to press submit and nothing happens. The button doesn’t change when you touch it,” Shanks said. “Frustrated is a mild term.”
With this small glitch, Shanks is afraid she could lose everything.
“If I can’t get it through by [June] 18, I lose that check,” Shanks said.
First Coast News reached out to DEO about Shanks’ claim and asked if her problem with the submit button is a common glitch, we did not receive a response.