Unemployment Benefits Preferred to Employment

Some background to start with: The company I work for is a medium sized security guard company with a fairly high turnover. The turnover is caused by the fact that the job is essentially unskilled labor requiring only about six hours of training, and therefore the people we get are not what you'd call self-starters. I work in HR and have been there for fifteen years. One of the hats I wear is that of record keeper / employment verifier.

You'd think in an economy with nearly 10 percent unemployment, people would want to keep a job where they don't have to lift stuff, move stuff, pack / unpack stuff, or screw part A into socket B, but nope they quit at the drop of a hat. Today I got a call from a guy we hired a month ago. We hired him, we spent 6 hours training him. We fingerprinted, photographed, drug tested, filled out all the forms, and then mailed off his state security guard certification packet--with a check for 50 dollars for his guard license. Do you think he even showed up for work?

Not only did he not show up for work, but he requested a letter on company letterhead stationary, explaining that he had in fact never worked a minute, nor received any wages from our company. You see, he didn't want to lose out on the unemployment money he's been getting for over a year now.
 
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