Eternally Screaming

This was brought up in my mind again since my step-MIL would get furious if someone presented her with a food she couldn’t eat with her Crohn’s but she’d never told them in the first place what she couldn’t have or how severe her reactions were.

When I worked at the pizza place a ton of people would order pizzas without cheese for a variety of reasons, but only occasionally would they say it was because of an allergy.

This one day a white lady came in and ordered three pizzas with no cheese. I have no explanation for why I followed up, especially because she was extremely moody and snippy. But I asked, “Is this because of an allergy?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“If it’s for an allergy you should know we do use a small amount of cheese in the red sauce as well. Is the allergy severe?”

“What? Yes, he’ll literally die, his throat closes up and stuff.”

I stared at her. Someone she was serving pizza to would die on contact with cheese? And she didn’t even bother to tell us that?!!?? Why in gods name was she even in a pizza place???

“Don’t you have anything without cheese?” She demanded.

I ended up doing a garlic rubbed crust with toppings.

I had to scrub down all the counters and surfaces and grab fresh bins for all the toppings to try to avoid any cross contamination and the extra time made her roll her eyes in exasperation. Like I’m sorry safety protocols are inconvenient but I hope this person you’re trying to murder leaves your life.

My ancestors would have wanted pasteurization, vaccines, antibiotics, disinfectants, birth control, psychiatric medications, pain management, anesthesia. My ancestors would have wanted to be able to keep their loved ones around longer, and not lose them too early/too soon to childbirths, injuries, bacterial infections, mental illnesses, and diseases that are curable and/or preventable in our modern day life.

If we reject modern medicine, then we reject all the labors and trials our ancestors went through for us; we reject our very nature.

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.

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

And body autonomy does include things that you don’t personally like either. I was prompted to write this post after a series of bad takes from progressives, but one of them was re-hashing the Sabrina Carpenter album cover drama with “I don’t think it’s conservative of me to think that the album cover is a bad look when we’ve seen images of women being abused in this way” because I do actually think you’ve failed to understand feminism by projecting your morals onto a woman who was consensually expressing her own autonomy just because she expressed it in a way that you didn’t like or that made you uncomfortable.

Body autonomy also means unhealthy choices. Body autonomy also means regret rates. Body autonomy also means freedom of sexuality. Body autonomy also means mutilation. If you believe body autonomy has limitations and exceptions, then your feminism is most likely surface level.

Reagan and the GOP spent 50 years brainwashing Americans into thinking that the government is the enemy, and we will all be prosperous if we give the rich tax breaks and let the money "trickle down."

And so now we have Trump, who gave the rich huge tax breaks, which led to a spiraling deficit, and Trump cutting back on Medicaid, ACA support, SNAP, and other social benefits in order to have enough moneyto fund ICE, his war, his ballroom, etc.

"It's easy to say "violence is never the answer" if you've never had to fight for your life"