What Being Poor Really Means

[midnight]

"I used to have a job I loved where I earned nearly $100,000 a year in salary plus benefits. I was pretty respected, promoted fairly high up within my organization, and the people that worked under me liked me because I was always fair, and honest, and I had integrity. I’ve worked hard most of my life, and I was proud of myself because I had accomplished quite a bit, despite the odds being stacked against me from the start. I put all that aside to help my husband accomplish his goals, to have my daughter, and to spend the first year of her life with her. My family is far more important to me than anything else.

My boss is a little different — money and status are what matter to him. The more he makes, the better. He doesn’t like people, and despite being one of the middle class, he still thinks he’s Mitt Romney. He’s incredibly cheap, and seems to hate women. At least, he’s far more polite to my husband than he is to me. Me, he calls stupid. Tells me I’m ugly, an idiot, calls me lazy and continually tries to bait me into a political discussion at work, so he can shout out racial slurs and comments in an attempt to make me mad. Apparently, he gets a kick out of breaking people.

My husband and I do not have a lot of money. We get food stamps and a little bit of cash assistance, and recently had to move in with my in-laws when our lease expired — we couldn’t afford the $425 a month in rent that we were paying. This means, that despite me being very Jewish, and therefore dressing modestly wearing a tiechel and long sleeves and long pants, as you can see below, I sometimes find I have to work on Shabbos."





"Last Saturday, I showed up for my 4.30 AM shift. I opened the tills, made coffee, heated up the burritos, the usual. Around six am, my boss walked in. I gave him a hand with his bags, and decided to dust the cigarette display, since business was a bit slow. As you can see by my photo above, I dress fairly conservatively. Apparently, this isn’t conservative enough for my boss, who told me my breasts were too prominent. This isn’t the first time he’s made a comment like this. Previous issues involved my butt — I was supposed to be wearing shirts long enough to cover my back, which I hadn’t been doing. He proceeded to lecture me for a good while on how I must be stupid to think that what I was wearing was acceptable. He asked me what my husband thought, and, unlike the me that most of my friends have grown to know, I answered with “I’m sorry. I will try to hide them more.”

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/09/23/what-being-poor-really-means-images/