Posted on 10/05/2015 10:17:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
My name is Christine, and I get food stamps. I've had to apply off and on over the past 16 years in order to make sure my family was fed. I don't feel the least bit ashamed of myself for this, but apparently some people think I should.
Some people think I, and people like me, am lazy. Or that we're taking advantage of other (smarter, harder-working) people. Those people seem to have an image in their heads of how someone who "deserves" assistance behaves, and a very narrow idea of how we should feel about it.
Those people are wrong. I'm going to lay out why they're wrong and also why it's not shame I feel when I fill out my application — it's anger.
1) I do it for my kids
I've been poor for most of my adult life, with the occasional foray into struggling. My first job was working at Taco Bell in college. Since then, I've worked mostly in the food service industry. I've worked fast-food, casual dining, and high-end restaurants. Once or twice I've picked up work as a clerk at gas stations and convenience stores. The job with the best pay and benefits was as kitchen supervisor at the county jail, which involved running herd on up to eight trustees for 12 hours a day while they cooked breakfast and lunch for the other inmates. What all of these jobs have in common is low pay, often brutal or unpredictable hours, and an element of personal danger. They are not easy jobs to do, and I'm proud of my skills, but I've never made more than $11 an hour at any of them.
When it's just me, an adult who can make her own choices, I can choose not to eat. Or to eat cheap junk that at least provides enough calories to keep going. I cannot make that same choice for my kids. They have to eat, they have to eat every day, and they have to eat enough of the right food for their bodies and brains to develop. The government's WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program helped a little, and I learned a few things at the weekly classes it mandated, but toddlers eat more than babies and our rent had just gone up and there were two adults but only one of us had a job. So I signed up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, known colloquially as food stamps) for the first time when my older child was about 2 years old.
My hand shook the first time I filled out the forms, and my voice probably squeaked during the interview when they went over the information I provided. But when I was approved, I felt nothing but relief. We kept our SNAP benefits for about a year, and then things got a little better and we decided not to try to renew them. Which brings me to my second point.
2) I don't do it all the time
I've never used SNAP for more than about 18 months at a time. I use it when I need it, when the situation is such that I can't pay my bills and buy groceries at the same time. When I'm underemployed, when my expenses rise, when an emergency repair or doctor visit cuts into my income.
After that first stretch, I didn't go back to SNAP for almost three years. Then suddenly I had two kids, a divorce, a single, crappy job, and all of the expenses of a household on my head. I went back to food stamps. At least the baby would have formula, the older child would have chicken soup, and I wouldn't have to walk a mile and a half to work on three crackers and a cup of tea.
I'd scour the weekly ads for the best sales, and then my mother and I would get together on my day off and do my weekly grocery shopping. There was also a grocery store next to the restaurant where I worked, and sometimes I'd pop in there on my way home for milk or bread, but I tried not to do that too often because it just made the trip longer and there's only so much you can carry in a backpack. I was lucky because I worked during the day, which meant I could at least try to cook a real meal once a day for my family. Not everyone has that luxury.
3) Cheap, nutritious, convenient: You have to pick two
I cringe when I see what celebrities and politicians buy when they try the "food stamp challenge" — when they try to live for a certain amount of time on the food budget allowed by SNAP (around a dollar or so per person per meal). I believe that for the most part, they are genuinely trying to do something positive, but it only shows the disconnect between "them" and "us." They go to whatever grocery store they usually patronize, they pick out what they normally eat. It never seems to occur to any of them that someone who relies on food stamps might have completely different shopping needs.
If you're working a full-time job — or more than one job — you have a limited amount of time to prepare food. If you're relying on public transportation or carpooling with friends, family, or coworkers, you probably have even less time. It's possible to eat a reasonably nutritious diet on food stamps, but it takes time and creativity and some compromises.
My larder relies on a few staples: canned beans and tomatoes, potatoes and onions, canned tuna, bouillon cubes. Rice and noodles. A few canned or frozen veggies. Dried beans and lentils for days I have time to cook them properly.
Fresh veggies are pretty much limited to carrots, celery, and the occasional head of cabbage or broccoli. They keep a lot longer than other veggies, and the kids will eat them raw for snacks. Protein is usually chicken — I can get a 10-pound bag of leg quarters for $7.99, split them into smaller bags, and freeze them separately. Occasionally when I find sausage on sale, I'll buy several packages and freeze that too. Hamburger is cheaper than steak but not as cheap as chicken, and sometimes pork steaks are cheaper than beef of any kind, so I guess it's a good thing we don't have any religious restrictions on our diets.
Fruit? Bananas, or sometimes apples or oranges when they're in season and therefore on sale. Maybe a melon in the summer when they're dirt cheap.
Organic? Nope. Precut? Double nope. Worried about chemicals leaking into canned food? I'm a lot more worried about getting enough calories to keep going. Past the sell-by date? Still good to eat.
There are "quick meals" and frozen dinners and faster options that are reasonably healthy, but they aren't available on a food stamp budget. It's also possible to fill a larder full of cheap pot pies and ramen noodles to last a month, but those are full of excess salt and fat and not much else. Not good for growing bodies.
4) No, I can't just "cut back"
Everything I've just described are realities that I deal with. I'm not ashamed of any of it; it's just what is. What makes me burn is when people look at me and assume that there's something I could give up and then I wouldn't need any assistance at all. I have a car. I have a cellphone. I have a solid internet connection that I pay for. I'm not giving up any of those, because they are not luxuries. They are absolute necessities. Yet some people seem to think I don't need those things — or that I don't have a right to them if I can't buy groceries as well. Allow me to enlighten them.
My rent is dirt cheap because my grandparents bought a house on the edge of town and rent it to me. Public transportation in my city is a joke — there are no els or subways, the buses stop running at 10 pm and don't reach the outskirts of town, and if you have to transfer, a trip can take two hours one way due to the ill-designed hub system. If I want to work, I have to have a car. Let me emphasize that point: If I want to work, I must have a car. But a car is somehow a "luxury."
I have a cellphone because people need to be able to contact me no matter where I am. I have older relatives who need help sometimes and two children who are often doing different things at different times of the day. I have a fiancé who does not live with me and works an opposite schedule. The phone is a cheap one, and the plan is prepaid rather than a contract, allowing more flexibility if I run short and just can't quite get my payment in on time. The amount I spend monthly on the phone wouldn't cover even a week of groceries, but for some reason there are those who think I should abandon it or I somehow don't "deserve" public assistance.
My older child is terrifyingly brilliant and enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program. My second looks to follow next year. This means a lot of homework that is received, turned in, or researched online. Do you know how early the library closes? Too early to rely on it as a source of internet access, especially when patrons are limited to two hours a day. I can't take them to coffee shops every day, and even if there were a network left unsecured by a neighbor I won't model unethical behavior by encouraging my children to use it.
5) I'm not poor because I'm lazy or stupid or uneducated
This is the assumption that makes me the angriest. "Why don't you get a better job?" "Why don't you get a second job?" "Educate yourself for a better career!"
I have a better idea — why don't you start valuing my time as highly as you value yours?
The most underpaid workers are often the ones you'd miss if they weren't there. Restaurant cooks and servers, clerks in stores, the people who clean your house or mow your lawn or take care of your kids or of you when you're old or sick. We do the things you can't do, or won't do, because you're doing other things. I'm not saying you should stop doing those other things. Those things you're doing are good things, possibly great things, hopefully wonderful things!
I understand that there are some skills that are rarer or more necessary or valuable than others. But not only is my time and labor not as highly valued as yours, it's legal to deliberately keep me in poverty. And yes, every time an employer hires anyone at less than a living wage, or at part-time hours, it is a deliberate choice. Employers make it because they can, because they can get away with it. Because it's legal to pay a wage that I can't live on even working 40 hours a week. It's legal to use scheduling software to justify cutting hours to 20 a week. To pay certain employees half of the minimum wage and expect patrons to make up for it with tips.
It's legal to jigger schedules so that employees must make last-minute arrangements for child care or transportation. It's legal to force employees to either cancel plans or lose their jobs. Once upon a time, it was possible to work a day job and a night job. But when you never know when you're going to work for even one job, it's virtually impossible to hold down two unless you have some sort of skill you can freelance. Add the realities of child care, transportation, and communication into the mix, and most low-income workers can forget it.
That's what makes me angry. Politicians want to look good to the people who give them lots of money, so they rail against helping people who don't have money to spend. They ignore and marginalize what people like me actually accomplish. I pay taxes — sales tax, property tax, gas tax. I offer a valuable service with the skills I have learned. But that's glossed over in favor of the myth of "steak and lobster — at taxpayer expense!" while actively enabling a system that keeps me poor. The woman who mutters under her breath about how I'm "taking advantage" fails to realize that the roads she drives on, the school her children attend, and the park they play in are all funded by taxpayers as well — including me.
That's why I collect assistance without shame. And I'll continue to do so whenever I need to, until an actual living wage is legislated and applied across the board.
******
Christine Gilbert lives with her children in southwest Missouri. This is her first published article.
“Also - anyone else think she had “help” in writing this article? The writing proficiency just doesn’t match up with the life story imho.”
I THOUGHT SO TOO!
Case in point, my brother's kid. Brilliant girl. Majored in chemistry of some kind. Two years in (at Duke) decided chemistry wasn't her thing and called dad up for a dinner meeting. At the meeting, she said she was changing her major to art history and proceeded to tell him all the wonderful opportunities awaiting her with an Art History degree.
She graduates. Can't find any of these wonderful jobs. Flounders for about a year. She then goes back and gets her masters in accounting or finance of some sort. Instantly gets hired by one of the Big Four (is it four now?) and out of the gate is making 6 figures or close to it. She is making well over 6 figures now AND has some sort of insanely popular blog on Tumbler that brings in another 25k a year.
You hit all her nail on the head! Particularly on refocus on her.
Those types of irresponsible short-termers are often the ones that show up late day after day or take days off without Manager’s OK regardless of the work schedule.
It was a useful tool for societal control.
I actually do think she wrote this herself. I know a lot of people who hover at the poverty level, and many are very articulate and quite passionate. They are bad at math for the most part, but this sounds like a very smart person who just hasn’t gotten her crap together.
And I’m going to go out on a limb and describe some other things that is going on in her life:
Smoking
Drinking
Tattoos
Marijuana
Now I know people will say “Hey, there is nothing wrong with X! I have/do X and I’m not on foodstamps!”
Fair enough. But of the scores of people I have met who would be in a similar situation to hers, 75%+ are smokers, 90%+ are drinkers (not alcoholics, they just like their beer/wine/tequila), 95%+ sport tattoos, and well over 50% smoke a little weed now and again.
Those habits are part of a culture, the culture of the working poor. When I pointed that out to some people who were in it, their response was “everybody smokes, drinks, has ink, and smokes a little every once in a while.”
Percentage of adult smokers in America: 17.8%
Percentage of adult drinkers in America: 67%
Percentage of adults with tattoos in America: 14%
(Ages 18 - 25: 36%, Ages 26 - 40: 40%)
Percentage of adults who smoke marijuana in the last month in America: 5.2%
The culture that says that these things as a group are “normal” is the same culture that sees it as “normal” to go through two to three jobs a year. This is a cultural problem.
Vogue? I can’t imagine what it would’ve looked like on a T-shirt.
That sounds like the safest limb on earth to go out on.
We have always had folks that bare scrape by, who waste both their money and their future. Difference now is we enable them to do so with gusto and obviously too many empty calories from seeing all the toady looking tated up lard-assed young women.
There are scammers, but the system really does work hard to catch them. You hear about them because they get caught.
My wife and I both work for the state of Alaska. I do IT support and repair, have done it for the state since 1997. Nobody is getting rich doing these types of state jobs, but they are steady employment that provides good medical insurance. I was an executive chef before I had kids, worked my way up from a bus boy at 15 to executive chef at a restaurant I couldn’t afford to eat at by the time I was 30. I didn’t get rich doing that, but it was supremely satisfying. I have done network administration for the state for the last 18 years because I needed benefits and a job I could drop at 5pm and not think about until I was back at work so I could raise my kids.
My wife works as an eligibility technician, determining if people who come in and apply are eligible. It’s run like going to a bank and getting a loan. Everything about these people’s histories is online. There are all kinds of people denied. There are few people who come in because they just want to live on the dole. These are people trying to improve their lives and just not finding the kinds of jobs that will pay them enough. The scammers get caught just like people who try to game any system get caught. In the same way an unpaid speeding ticket in Tennessee will get your license suspended in your home state of Oklahoma, and people looking to give or deny you credit have access to the utility bills you’ve been late on, people applying for support are scrutinized. People are caught all the time and have benefits revoked and they have to pay back money they gamed. There is not as much fraud that gets by as the media would have you think.
There are a limited amount of pharm tech jobs. Not everyone who is trained to do something can do that something.
At the same time, reasonably smart people can figure their way out in the world, can figure out how to better themselves, move to places where jobs are, and have a successful life. There are plenty others that just aren’t smart enough, or those who have illnesses or injuries that they didn’t expect that took away their ability to earn a living wage, or people stuck where they don’t have the money to move to a place with better jobs, and a lack of employment out there. Children happen and taking care of them can limit your options. Sometimes you have to take care of an ailing parent or other family member. Not everyone gets a successful life and good education. Many people do get shit on by randomness that can come out of nowhere. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut, some people have to mop the floors.
My master’s is in psychology. Since I had small kids I could never go on to get licensing since you have to collect full time hours for two straight years and I didn’t believe in leaving my kids that long. I have no regrets but now my resume goes to the bottom of the pile for ANY job because I haven’t worked in so long.
Not everyone gets to be an astronaut, some people have to mop the floors.
housekeeping can be a good paying job just like pharm techs.
My condo’s HOA has housekeeping come in once a week. There’s no shame in doing that kind of work.
Absolutely not. But there aren’t as many jobs as there are citizens.
these simpletons don't understand if the min. wage keeps getting hacked up, not only will they NOT be getting food stamps, but will loose out on other things as well...like free phones, rent assistance, etc and they'll loose their precious "earned income" tax thievery...
I don't mind if people that are working get food stamps..I'd rather help those that are trying than to help those that do nothing...
I do understand that if you work your way up say at Burger King or McDonalds, the managers can make pretty decent money....
I think the right people can do pretty well on minimum wage IF they have full time hours, which fast food places often do not....
there is a reason she is part time...if she worked more or full time or at higher wage, she would loose her big lotto winnings aka EIC...
some people really do fix their lives so they get that big check...I'm not kidding....
but as others pointed out, getting MARRIED and staying MARRIED is the best economic choice out there....
Ted Cruz stated on Hannity several weeks ago that if we cut some of the welfare for the “poor” we also have got to cut it for the elites.....I’m all in...
Excellent questions but they're based on the increasingly wild assumption that she has any idea who the father is (fathers are) from which to collect support.
It's just much easier to go on the dole than to go to all the trouble of (1)-identifying the possible father(s), (2)-proving if he is (they are) in fact the father(s), and (3)-getting him (them) to pay support.
Stopped reading right there.
A living wage for whom? Five illegitimate kids? Fifteen? As many as you can pump out as fast as a passing dork can pump them in?
Fat lazy angry botch...no wonder there’s no man around.
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