SNAILED IT

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.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

He gives up several chances to go after Kuregumo to focus on saving Char, because her life if more important than his vendetta

He gives up Enten to save Hakuri's life, because even when Hakuri was 'powerless' he was still worth more by being a good person than the most valuable object in the world to Chihiro

Basically ignores all three sides of a 3 way stand-off btw the government, the Hishaku, and Samura to ask Iori (who everyone else is treating like a living Mcguffin) what She Wants to Do and deliberately makes it an informed decision and lets her know he will support her no matter what

EVEN The Very First Chapter - Chihiro gives up a lead on the Hishaku to focus on saving a nameless small town and unnamed background extra

Anyway, thematically, Chihiro (who for his father and Samura explicitly represents a brighter future) not just wanting to save people, but having an overwhelming respect for their autonomy makes sense.

Especially as so much of the confrontation with Akemura at end of Part 1 is triggered by Yura and the Kamunabi longing to go back to the past because it seemed more orderly, but it sucked, it always sucked it just didn't suck for them specifically (See noteable human trafficker Kyora cosy with the government, its why 2 out of4 of Japan's best sorcerers are orphan teens raised to kill/torture/die for their country/its why chiaki's at risk of getting sold off/hiyuki's about to go to war as a fetus)!!

The kingly pig looks taken aback by this statement. "You claim to be 'baiting' our kind?.. A master of it, no less - after all the trust we hsve placed in you?"