SNAP out of it!

We've all seen them. The women with their hair all done up and their acrylic (or gel) nails freshly done. The ones with gold jewelry and Coach purses. The women who look like they've got money flying out of their asses every time they hit the bathroom. You know, the ones that you wouldn't glance at twice or even think about disparaging them for what they have, if only they weren't ahead of you in the checkout pulling out that EBT card?

Yeah. Them.

We've all known of situations where someone is abusing the system. They have a boyfriend living with them and they don't count his income when they apply. They have money in the bank, but claim they have no bank account. They have someone paying all their bills, yet claim they don't. We've all seen it, we've all heard of it.


I'm not going to get way into numbers or percentages or studies. However, I will say that even though 46,670,373 people are on Food Stamps in this country, only an estimated 5 million receive unemployment benefits along with Food Stamps. A large percentage are children. Some are elderly. Accounting for all of that basically means that there's a slim chance the woman in front of you in line is scamming the system. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It does. But the chances are good that she either has a job that doesn't pay enough, or she's a single mom, or she's a combination of the two. Or she's a stay-at-home-mom whose partner doesn't make enough.

I'm going to run with that last one for a minute. A lot of people get pissed off and say “Well, if she's a SAHM and they need to be on assistance, then she should get off her ass and get a JOB!”. Well, let's examine that, shall we?


The average cost of childcare is huge. Here in my state (which is by no means wealthy on average), it's approximately $8500 per year. And I consider myself lucky because in Washington D.C., it's over $20,000 per year.


Let's put this in perspective using my own situation. If I were to put my daughter in daycare full time, it would cost more than my fucking rent per month. I would need a job that paid me at LEAST $703 per month in order to just keep her in daycare. That's not food. That's not fuel. That's no extras. ONLY daycare. Working full time at a minimum wage job (which, let's face it, not many people get full time when it's at minimum wage. I'd get 25 hours if I was lucky), I would gross $1160 per month. Subtract for taxes (thankfully, Texas has no state taxes), and my take-home would be somewhere around $956 per month. Add in around double the fuel cost because we only have one vehicle, and there goes another $100. Oh! And lest we forget that most daycare centers do not do cloth diapers. So there's yet another $50 (at least). And let's not forget that once I'm working full time, I will be required to carry health insurance since I'm not married to my "baby daddy" and I can't be on his insurance. There goes the rest of my paycheck.


So, I would be working 40 hours per week, losing valuable time with my daughter and watching other people raise her for me...for nothing? In fact, the chances are good that I'd be paying out more than I'd be bringing in.


Nope. Fuck that. And in case anyone out there is wondering, NO we're not on any form of assistance. Could we use it? Fuck yes. But, $3 per month separates us from that woman in line tapping her acrylics on the counter.

Back to that. I don't begrudge anyone their need or desire to look nice and feel good about themselves. I try not to judge. So she has an iPhone? So what! How do I know she didn't get that as a gift? Ya know, it's not just middle class people who have birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. Hell, I got a Windows phone for Mother's Day this year. I'm sure people would be looking me up and down if I whipped it out while using an EBT card. Not only that, but iPhones come in prepaid now, too. So how do you know she's not just buying refill cards to maintain it? How do you know someone else isn't paying her bill or buying cards for her as a gift? And furthermore, how do you know that her hair and nails weren't done by a friend or family member and that she didn't pay a dime for it? A lot of women who have cosmetologists in the family or in their circle of friends pay only for supplies (if that).


The other one I heard a lot: “That bitch was dripping in jewelry and climbed into an Escalade after buying her groceries on Food Stamps!”.


Again, poor people receive gifts, too. And the Escalade? How the fuck do you know it was HERS? I'm not defending people who actually abuse the system, but to look down on someone because they don't look poor to you is bullshit. You don't know each person's individual situation. You don't know if that soccer mom in the SUV just got laid off. You don't know if she had to quit her job to take care of a terminally ill child and so they're just living off of one income now. You don't know if the person who has an Xbox and a shit-ton of games bought it when they HAD a job. So, what, a person should give up everything they worked hard for because they've fallen on hard times? How would you feel if you worked your ass off to get something nice and then someone said you shouldn't have it because you ended up losing your job and have to be on assistance? Wouldn't feel too good, would it?



So here's what I ask of you. The next time you see the woman with the done up nails and hair, the jewelry, and the iPhone... smile. Don't begrudge her when she swipes that card. Chances are, she's embarrassed as shit and doesn't want anyone seeing her use it. That's right. There are people who are completely embarrassed that they can't 100% take care of themselves. So, instead of making snide comments like,“Well, I can't afford an iPhone and I work, why should she have one?”... smile. Her life maybe harder than you realize and you being a judgmental asshole doesn't help any.