4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

like she's just ... fine? she is fine.

loose in a weird place and heavily pregnant? worried but fine. seeing strange person emerge from car nearby? fine. be captured by this person happily and allow them to put you places and do stuff to you? fine. be contained on a back porch alone much of the day where all your needs are met but there's not a lot of room to roam and people aren't there with you 24/7? fine. being leashed up and walked? fine. being put in a car and taken around to various locations? fine. getting her jabs at the shelter clinic? fine. having the shelter employees bring out another intact female pitbull to see how she would react (OH MY GOD WHY DID THEY DO THIS WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS? BUT--) somehow fine. see a loose cat walking around in the parking lot near you? fine. get an X-ray at the vet? fine. techs even remarked that she was unusually cooperative, like to a notable degree. jumpscared by a random malamute emerging from a room right in front of your nose? fine. see some kittens thru a glass window? fine. being left alone all night with just the radio on? fine. have people nearby when you have a REALLY good chew? fine. in fact actively wants to share.

like who is this dog. she immediately loves and trusts every human she meets. she gets worried about stuff but then she looks at her person and sees if they think it's a big deal or not and if they don't think it's a big deal she shakes it off. I opened an umbrella in front of her like people do for puppy temperament tests, and she just startled back a bit in surprise, glanced at Ship and at me, saw that we didn't think it was a threat, and dismissed it. she was just like "OH GOHS WHAT IS THAT, hey new friends what is that is it ok?" and we said "it's ok, I am familiar with this object and it is not a threat" and she said "oh okay phew thanks for telling me, now I know this object is safe :)"

^ translation of our nonverbal conversation translated into Human Words :)

I'm high and I'm just like thinking about how much I love talking to animals

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.