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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 gurgling, curdle-furred Muppet was diagnosed with stage III kidney disease at 7, at which point it seemed likely he would live only another couple of years. I knew his breed was prone to it, and that he was not ethically bred, when I adopted him, and did so assuming that he would develop CKD from the jump. He did. And that is how it felt. Of course. So every year after that was stolen time, and he lived to an improbable 14+ years. The entire time, I held him lightly, knowing I was going to have to let him go. It made those years really good. I really cherished them. I am grateful for them and for what they taught me.

Losing him was expected, and an easy transition. Losing his two brothers unexpectedly within the same week was horrific. I am still broken even two years later. My boyfriend is still broken. Their baby sister is still broken. The anticipatory grief towards her, my bright little star, our Fancy, is bone-crushing at times, because those final moments are crowded so near, still. I am struggling mightily with it. I cry often. I am Very Afraid.

All I can say I've learned, after having our lives torn apart:

Make their lives, every day, good lives. Keep them in fresh food and water, keep them clean. Every day make sure their eyes are bright for at least an hour, all told. If they cry, learn to understand, and tend them. Check on their paws, ears, and mouths regularly. Try to teach them tricks. Show them new things often. If they interfere with something of yours, let them have it or give them something like it of their own. Leave a place beside you, always. If they misbehave, do not punish the behavior -- address the underlying need, it is valid. Play. Love. Gentle hands. Soft voices. Do not turn away during the times you are tired or frustrated or do not know how to fix something. Do something. Know that they are living things with interiority and feelings, and they have an image and an idea of you that encompasses how you sound and smell how you touch them, that they have an understanding of what you are like as a person, and they have no choice but to be with you, so make that person a good one. If you feel that you aren't very good and don't know what you are doing, keep trying. Ask for help if you need to.

This should be you:

A being guided by love even when he had literally no idea what was going on.

The best balm for borrowed grief is to simply do your very best, every day.

However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.