man no more than animal

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.

if you don't know me, i'm ren/vacant/fish and i'm a 28 year old transmasculine black queer autistic person who's currently a full time student while trying to balance delivery apps to make money. last year i was let go from my job because they were trying to push me out anyway and since then i've been a financial wreck. between unemployment not being nearly enough, nearly 900 job applications and the only job i got was immediately so toxic i had to quit within the first four days, and trump fucking with student loans and education (which i'd been using to try and get by while i hopefully get a degree to get a better job) i'm just at my wits end. my partner currently has a disability hearing on 5/20 to see if they're eligible for aid but even that should we get approved wouldn't be enough to cover all of our expenses. if they get denied again then they're probably going to see about going to school and see if the school will accommodate their disabilities. we'll see.

to cut to the chase, we're on the verge of homelessness (again) and i can't make money delivering fast enough to try and make ends meet. the main thing that i can't lose is my car because without said car i can't make money at all so that's the most pressing issue.

my car payment is due 5/17 for $497 dollars. right now i have about $200 but between now and then i doubt i'll be able to make nearly $300 bucks so as per usual i'm turning to you all for help.

if you can spare anything at all, it would be meaningful. i'm trying to build up other sources of money (including embarrassing myself on the internet but that's probably not gonna go anywhere anytime soon if at all) including art commissions, substack subscriptions, and any other side hustle that i can find that actually works (because many Do Not). if you aren't able to, that's totally fine i know we're all suffering rn so rbs help.

links below, take care of yourselves.

thank you to everyone who's donated, i really really appreciate it.

i was thankfully able to make my car payment <3

unfortunately we're still not out of the woods. we're waiting to hear back about my partner's disability claim. if things are favorable, yay. if not then we're kind of back at square one again and they may have to try and get a job though with the market it's like oof.

the cheaper accommodations we were hoping to secure fell through. we're still probably not able to get an apartment based on my income alone (due to rental requirements for income). we may try and finesse a place but that's up in the air and i'm wary of spending money on an app fee to just get rejected.

still no word about if or when i'll get financial aid. that's cool.

if we do end up getting trapped at our current apartment to stave off homelessness, the new rental rate is 1851 alone. that wouldn't include internet, electric, our phones, etc. like literally almost 1900 for a cockroach infested apartment. i've tried arguing with them about the rate but they don't care.

donations are still super appreciated. i haven't set up a gofundme because i need money Now and i don't want to wait and deal with the site's fees.

i'm still offering commissions, doordashing/instacarting, applying to jobs with no luck, applied for other government resources to little success (they may potentially take our food stamps too so that's cool), and have been trying to find a will to live. i don't really have one these days to be honest.

next month will be a year since this bullshit started and i just feel even more helpless than before.

we may be looking at homelessness. my partner has applied for university and i have applied for a scholarship as well but information on money is still up in the air. we just need enough to squeak by this month and i’m hoping that we will be able to get some type of good news in june.

the new rental amount is $1851 for month to month. i wish i could move too. right now i have $1226 thanks to door dashing and all of you all’s generosity. this means i still need $625 to stay in the place we’re at for now and fingers crossed that financial aid for both of us drops in june and we can use that to move somewhere else cheaper.

unfortunately my current complex is shit and won’t let me pay online due to a miscommunication on their part in december and i’ve had to take out money orders instead. this adds a $10 whenever i withdraw money from the bank so overall looking at $635 that i still need to raise.

if you don’t have anything to spare i totally understand. i wish i wasn’t in this position and i hope no one else ever is. reblogs help. i also offer art commissions, and i have a substack where i write about my projects and writing. i’m also willing to beta read anything you have written and i leave lots of comments though i don’t have a specific pay structure for that. thank you again for your time.

paypal info in the first post.