Grumbles

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.

Things are scary.

Maybe you need a soft and gently purring Fancy making big big mashy paws in the air to help you out!

normal: every so often, you pick up a knife and your brain thinks about hurting someone. you go “the fuck” and then continue chopping your vegetables

not normal: every time (or most times) you pick up a knife, your brain thinks about hurting someone. you actively avoid touching knives, and cannot continue chopping your vegetables

normal: worrying about someone’s health and well-being when you already know that they have a certain condition

not normal: getting intrusive thoughts about a certain person getting sick, and then planning out your day as if they are actually sick

normal: feeling the need to throw something off the edge of a high place any time you’re on a bridge or at the top of a building

not normal: refusing to go anywhere near a bridge or tall building in case you throw something off of it

normal: being careful in the process of turning off your oven, your heater, or other appliances

not normal: having to triple check the appliances, and then getting intrusive thoughts doubting whether you’ve turned them off or not, causing you to go back home to make sure

normal: getting the occasional strange or scary intrusive thought, and being able to shrug it off fairly easily

not normal: getting intrusive thoughts incredibly often (several times a day), and not being able to let go of them. changing your behaviour due to intrusive thoughts

Hey, folks! Pride month is here, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to promote the custom name and pronoun buttons I make. =]

I opened my little shop in late 2015 because I was having trouble getting misgendered myself, so I started making these buttons and I've made thousands of name and pronoun buttons for folks since. It's so cool to have been even just a tiny part of so many people's journeys like that. I've even got over 100(!) different pride flags made in the Painted style, too, so whatever your flag I've got you covered.