I get food stamps, and I’m not ashamed

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think I can see why, despite some decent writing skills

You think she actually wrote this herself? I suspect some democratic operative ghosted it, exaggerated a bit, and then hit us with the punch line - "living wage."

When it's just me, an adult who can make her own choices, I can choose not to eat.

I think I found the fork in the road.

Kids, but no husband?

Why did you have kids?

Child support from the baby daddy or daddies?

BTW, you're welcome for the help. The government had to take money away from another family to feed yours.

And by the way, thank the Democrats and Obama, who have now made sure there will not be anymore jobs with more than 29 hours, nor with benefits.

They obviously don't value your time at all.

It never stops at “just that one.

True enough, provided the person doesn't stop.

However, if this is like most places, working at all would cost her.

It’s legal to pay you so little because that’s what your lablor is worth. Your employer would give you 40 hours a week, but you probably voted for the kenyan anti-christ, and thus you got obamacare and an economy with less growth and fewer opportunities.

You effed up, along with tens of millions of others. It’s all your fault.

The economics of restaurant/food workers getting paid more via government mandate equals fewer people eating out.

This will certainly mean that more restaurants and fast food places close, being run out of business because the profit margins for them are so narrow, and in the end, more food service people jobless, and more competition for the fewer food service jobs remaining.

I see references to “kids” but no reference to “father” or “husband”.

Then suddenly I had two kids, a divorce, a single, crappy job, and all of the expenses of a household on my head.

Divorce implies there was a husband and father.

Does not sound like there is any child support though.

Maybe this a person who needs the assistance. Unfortunately justnlike disability, for every real need there are 10, 20, or more people who abuse the system. As long as more people abuse the system and make it a way of life, I will oppose that system until it’s reformed. The. Living wage thing tells me she is ignorant and the mention of 2 adults in the house says she is married to a deadbeat. Therefore liberal with poor life choices wining about the rest of us not doing enough for her. Just because she wrote it well and says some of the right things the facts leached through, Entitled liberal with poor life choices!

When you’re down and out and there’s no job, friends, family, or church to fall back on, there’s always the government. And remember, the government is always there to help you. Right?

Sounds like someone who voted for Obama’s hope and change. BTW, there’s someone down in Mexico (or over in Syria) that will be along shortly to take her job for a few peso’s less. Maybe even take some of her welfare too. She better brace herself, it ain’t getting better until we get some leadership in government.

Next time, she should marry a rich man or at least a man who can provide a decent living for his family. There are still good men out there and fathers matter.

There are plenty of good paying jobs out there without a college degree, its called a trade, the world needs plumber, electricians, electronic repair, truck drivers. programmers, plenty of places will teach you the needed skill but you have to apply not sit home and collect freebies and whine.

I see the words "I" and "me" in there more than Obama uses, and that's saying something, but I didn't see any mention of a husband.

Speaking of marriage my wife and I have been married 34 years today and we raised 8 kids at times on a $12.50/hr single income. We did use WIC but never food stamps.

My wife stayed home and raised and home schooled our kids.

I have absolutely no sympathy for this woman, she getting $500/mo from people, of whom, some are struggling themselves.

She was popping out kids to increase her handouts from the gov. and now what legislation to get more money for an entry level job, that she will only work at long enough to qualify for unemployment money.

She is just a parasite on society. IMHO

And there in lies the rub this chick is missing...

Gratitude,

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you as the saying goes.

her rent is “dirt cheap”

How much does she claim her rent is vs. how much it actually is? Section 8 may be paying more than the actual rent.

I have to admit she has some points. I grew up poor, but we had opportunity and freedom them. It isn’t here now.

The solution. Less whining, more thankfulness............

All under her control.

Which is what I tell my youngest, he is a single 35 year old, and was dumb enough to drop out of HS in his Senior year the day he turned 18. Won’t get his GED, doesn’t want anything to do with the education process, not even tech school, where he would do good. So he is forced to live on the $15 an hr factory job, he has his state issue fork lift operators license, can do small welding jobs, but won’t go to tech school to make a better life for himself. So he lives on the edge of poverty constantly. He works his butt off at the job.

His oldest bro lost his high pay job due to 0’s Depression, took a pizza delivery job, worked his way up to manager and is working on district manager now. He is on the wrong side of 40, for today’s market. They keep their heads above water. And limited family to 1. They will not prosper as well as if had gone to business school. This is not the day and age when hard work pays off, it’s that piece of paper.

This is not the day and age when hard work pays off, it’s that piece of paper.

You think that the advanced degree removes the need for hard work? You're flat out wrong. First it's hard work to get the degree. You have to go to school and forgo any decent income while you're in school. Second, once you have it you still have to use what you learned and there are plenty of other people with the same qualifications who are willing to work as hard or harder than you to get ahead of you. Real world problems don't work out to have the clean and pat solutions that class exercises have.

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