[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.
Top Text: “CUSTOMER PAYS FOR A CARTFULL OF JUNK FOOD”
Bottom Text: “WITH FOOD STAMPS”]This happens a lot where I work, customers come in and buy a shitton of candy, pop, ice-cream and other junk food then use their food stamps to pay for it all. Food Stamps are there to pay for what you need, not for what you want. I have rarely ran into a customer who paid for a cartfull of food they needed with food stamps. In early March I had one customer who paid for two cartfulls of food they needed with their food stamps, it’s now late April and I have yet to come across another.
Just yesterday a lady came in and had her kids slap down what candy they wanted on the counter (definitely not necessities) and pulled out her LoneStar card. She promptly asked me “Do you accept lone star?” and I said yes. Though if I had it my way I’d be “No, not unless what your buying with that LoneStar card is food you need.”
But I can’t be that way or else this lil’ robin would end up fired. I’m sorry I think that way but I grew up in a household where needs were top priority and wants were out of the question, since while growing up my family experienced much financial hardship. We didn’t mooch off the government because by their standards (though my dad worked for a few bucks above the required minimum wage) he still made too much. So we were pretty much on our own. “You want candy? Too bad, buying good food was more important.” “Oh you want the latest toy? Sorry honey, we’ve got bills to pay.” “You want to go to the water park, sorry… car’s broke down and we gotta fix it.”
Now every time a customer buys nothing but junk food with their food stamps, I just want to slap them across the store.
This is super shitty. Poor people aren’t allowed to have ice cream? Poor people can only eat organic veggies? It’s so so so awful to judge what a person puts in their cart to eat. It’s none of your damn business. Healthy food costs more and takes more time to prepare. If I work two jobs and am a single mom, I don’t have time to prepare from-scratch food… maybe I need frozen meals so I can actually spend time with my kids while they’re heating instead of spending 45 minutes of my few hours a day with them cooking something. Maybe I just LIKE frozen meals. Maybe I need food my teenage kid can make for my younger kid while he’s watching her. Maybe I can’t afford the healthier stuff because food stamps aren’t a never-ending supply… they’re extremely limited and certainly not enough. This OP is an asshole.
This Robin pisses me off. OP has no right to police a person’s life. Food stamps don’t magically allow you to buy lobster and fresh veggies and other foods you have to prepare. If someone’s kids want candy, let them get the damn candy without being such a classist prick. “Mooching off the government”? I hope this person wasn’t a POC because I bet your tune would be different if they weren’t. It’s cheaper to buy cheap foods than “good food”. Who’d have imagined, right?
OP is clearly the universal arbiter of needs vs. wants.
When I was a grocery store cashier, I rang up a LOT of normal stuff (eggs, milk, cheese, generic-brand Cheerios and Cornflakes) with food stamps. i suspect the people who claim they “mostly” see junk food, like this OP, are having their perceptions rather extremely colored by the fact that they’re assholes and they forget all the transactions that didn’t get their Food Police Panties into a self-righteous wad.