“You don’t deserve a steak,” Woman tells a single mom using SNAP benefits to pay for her groceries

Mary Duncan

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*

https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4Rxlin_0l2qvnul00
Photo byEdson SaldañaonUnsplash

When I was younger and my daughter Tori was in elementary school, I was laid off from my office job and luckily was able to collect unemployment until I was able to get back on my feet again. At the time Tori and I were living alone together in a trailer park and when I lost my job I was terrified of what might happen to us. I quickly budgeted out all of my money, cut back on all of my expenses, and applied for every bit of aid I qualified for to ensure that we could stay where we lived so Tori could stay in her school district.

Because of this layoff and loss of income, I qualified for SNAP, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. I am not sure if it is the same in every state, but in Connecticut, SNAP will pay for any food items anywhere it is accepted, and I mean anything.

Unlike WIC, another nutritional assistance program intended for women, infants, and children which limits what you buy to certain brands of “healthy” items like eggs, milk, peanut butter, and cereal, there’s no restriction on what you buy or how much of your SNAP money can be spent. If you want to spend your SNAP benefits on steak and shrimp, or cookies and ice cream, that’s your choice and your right.

Some people are in serious disagreement about people being able to have this right.

I’ll be honest. When I was on SNAP, I indeed bought cookies, snacks, ice cream, and other things considered “junk” along with my healthy items. For one thing, I wanted them, and for another, I wanted to keep my daughter’s life normal and not have to tell her that she couldn’t have Oreos because mommy was poor. However, this didn’t make me any less apt to hide my SNAP card when I went to pay.

There is a stigma around taking government assistance, of course. I was thankful that the SNAP card looked like and could be swiped like a regular credit card and you didn’t have to alert a cashier that you were using one on a pin pad, thus also alerting everyone else in line around you that you are on the dole.

My friend Patty realized this horror when we worked together at a restaurant. She was divorced and had a teenage son, Matt, and her single income as a waitress made her qualify for SNAP benefits.

When I arrived at work one afternoon she came right up to me and launched into one of her: “You won’t believe what happened to me,” tirades that often ended in hilarity like the time she ran herself over with her own car.

Patty proceeded to tell me that she had gone to the grocery store with Matt that weekend, his birthday weekend to be precise, and told him he could choose whatever he wanted to have for his seventeenth birthday dinner.

Being the growing teenage boy he was, Matt decided he wanted steak and potatoes for dinner, with a homemade ice cream sundae for dessert. Patty was happy to provide that for him, as he didn’t ask for much else and his big gift of a used car was coming from his father.

She and Matt were in line at the grocery store to pay for their night’s provisions. Two steaks, a half gallon of ice cream, some hot fudge, whipped cream, and candy - along with her other grocery items - were lined up on the conveyor belt.

As Patty raised her arm to swipe her SNAP card through the reader, she heard a gasp from someone standing near her and looked over to see the face of a horrified woman standing behind her in line.

“Are you okay?” Patty asked.

“You seem to be the one with the problem,” the woman answered Patty. “Shame on you for using welfare to pay for steaks and candy!”

“Excuse me?” Patty said, putting her hands on her hips. Patty was a tough chick, and this lady did not know who she was messing with.

“You don’t deserve a steak if you can’t afford it!” The woman shouted at her.

Patty then looked at the young cashier who stood mortified in front of her, and she waved her thumb at the lady behind her, telling the cashier:

“You’d better call your manager now to get this woman out of my grocery line, or else you’ll have to be calling the police soon because she's harassing me.”

“Trash,” the woman hissed at Patty, and then backed her cart out of line, abandoned it, and hastily shuffled out of the store.

“I don’t think my boss would want her business anyway, acting like that,” the young cashier apparently told Patty as he helped bag her groceries.

How would you have reacted if you were Patty? And do you think people on SNAP deserve steaks?

Hi, I hope you enjoyed this story! I am a freelance writing single mom trying to create a better life for me and my daughter through words. If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving a small donation: https://ko-fi.com/maryduncan

Read full story in "NewsBreak" App
# Food# Relationships# Lifestyle# Society# Government

Comments / 1782

Published by

I write about the weird complexities of relationships to make a better life for me and my daughter through words. https://ko-fi.com/maryduncan

Connecticut State
127K followers

More from Mary Duncan

Teen boy wants to change gender, but in the 1990s parents do everything to stop him

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. When I was in kindergarten there was a set of fraternal twins in my class, Corinne and Christopher. Though they weren’t of the same gender, it didn’t matter to them. Their twin-ship made them inseparably close to each other and they rarely stepped out of their own little world to play with us other kids. It was the mid-eighties at the time, and when their mother cut Corinne’s hair into a bob and Christopher still sported a bowl cut, there were times it was hard to tell them apart, their faces were so similar.

Read full story
19 comments

Couple with new baby secretly moves away so mother-in-law can no longer drop in unexpectedly

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. I didn’t exactly take the life course that most parents probably want their daughters to take. I didn’t go to college right out of high school, deciding to move out and get a job waitressing instead, and a few years after that I was unmarried and pregnant. I was alone, well, with my mother when my daughter was born, but I was a single mom from the start.

Read full story
197 comments

“You know you’re not really pretty, right?” Grandma tells little girl after she gets her ears pierced

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. I have always believed that what people do with their bodies and the changes they want to make to them, should be their choice and their choice alone. As in, a parent shouldn’t be able to alter their child’s body without their consent. You would never put a tattoo on your baby, right? But many parents have no problem at all piercing their baby’s ears when they are still infants and can’t make that choice for themselves. Sure, you can argue that earrings aren’t permanent, you can always take them out, but that doesn’t mean that they may leave a permanent scar.

Read full story
40 comments

Jealous woman tells neighbor to build a taller fence for his wife because her husband keeps watching her swim

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. The wildest thing that ever happened in my neighborhood growing up was when The Mercers painted their whole house matte black to mess with the neighbors who hated what they had done. All of the neighbors were beside themselves that the house was not only now a black eyesore but also had a full overgrown yard of wildflowers - not the neatly manicured grass of every other house on the block.

Read full story
8 comments

“Are you okay?” Affair revealed when wife reads texts from mistress while husband is unconscious

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. A few days ago I wrote about how my good friend Thea found out her husband was cheating on her while she was still in the maternity ward after having their second child.

Read full story
27 comments

Mother disowns daughter when daughter learns baby has Down syndrome and aborts the child

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. I must admit that I never wanted to be a mother. My half-sister is twelve years younger than me, so I was old enough and mature enough when she was born and going through infancy and toddlerhood to know that I wanted nothing to do with parenting. She was only about six years old when I moved out of the family home, so we aren’t close, which is sad now, but I guess that is what happens when some siblings are born so far apart.

Read full story
313 comments

“I will stand and wait here all day,” woman tells pushy cashier in busy store filled with self-checkout machines

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. I recently learned that it took only sixty-six years to go from the Wright brothers making their first flight in an airplane to Neil Armstrong stepping out onto the Moon.

Read full story
368 comments

Woman catches her brother-in-law cheating while her sister is still in the hospital after delivering their son

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. My friend Thea discovered that her husband was having an affair while she was still in the maternity ward after giving birth to their second child. Her husband, Ryan, had told Thea that he’d been called into work and would get paid double for coming in as they were so desperate, and since Thea and their new son Oliver were doing fine and supposed to go home the next day, she agreed. Thea’s reasoning was, even if Ryan had stayed in the hospital with her all night with their newborn he wouldn’t have gotten any sleep while she was up nursing the baby, and would be more useful to them both if he were making money instead.

Read full story
21 comments

“You’ll never make it,” Teacher crushes dreams of young student, makes her cry in front of class

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. I have two terrible memories of being in school, and both of them have led to anxieties that I have carried with me for all of my life.

Read full story
15 comments

“It was too hard to get around in here.” Mother-in-law has kitchen island removed without permission while housesitting

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a family member who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to marry my boyfriend and have his mother, Luanne, become my mother-in-law. I already know Luanne doesn’t care for me, as I am thirteen years younger than my boyfriend’s ex and she thinks her son left his wife to satiate his need for a younger woman. I know this is not the case and I am comfortable with our age difference, but it definitely makes Luanne a bit suspicious.

Read full story
90 comments

Waitress gives friend and co-worker all her tip money when friend doesn’t make enough during shift to pay babysitter

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. For many years I worked at a very busy family-owned restaurant in town and made some great friends with the other waitresses while I was there.

Read full story
22 comments

Neighbor accuses man of being a peeping tom when he swims in his pool at night, can see in her lighted windows

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a family member who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. When I was growing up my family was close to our next-door neighbors, the Mercers. The Mercers were the bane of my neighborhood’s existence after they painted their house black to show off their lawn flamingos, but the Mercers were great to us and we loved their company. We would often have picnics with them in the summer, exchange gifts on holidays and birthdays, and of course, I got free use of their pool any time I wanted.

Read full story
74 comments

Mom wants to kick teen daughter out of house when she dyes her hair blue, dad shaves his head in protest

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. When I was a teenager I started experimenting with hair color without my parent’s permission. When I was a junior in high school and only sixteen years old at the time, I got my first job and had my first paycheck that I could spend or save for anything I wanted. It didn’t take me long to go and find myself the perfect shade of fire-engine red to dye my blondish hair.

Read full story
116 comments

Mom terminates her own parental rights so she doesn't have to pay when teen daughter is admitted to psych ward

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a family member who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. When I was in my early thirties I had a bit of a mental breakdown and ended up in what my local psychiatric hospital calls their “Intensive Outpatient Program” or, IOP. The IOP required me to attend in-person group and personal therapy sessions that went from 9 am to 1 pm for five days a week, for six weeks. I was lucky to be unemployed at this time or else I never would have been able to complete the program, despite the fact that the unemployment is partially what got me there in the first place.

Read full story
254 comments

“You shouldn’t be allowed to have a baby,” staunch Christian tells gay couple who wants a child of their own

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*. After one of my best friends Terry and his husband Doug had finally been legally married in our state, something that was very important to them and they waited for a very long time, they decided that it was time to bring a child into their family.

Read full story
261 comments

“I’ll find a girlfriend who’ll lend me money,” says unemployed, cheating husband who won’t get a job

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. For all of my adult life, I have been a strong, independent woman who has not relied on a man’s support or income to sustain me or my teenage daughter, Tori. For the first time in my life, I’m living with a man, my boyfriend of three years, and I’m currently in a position where I make and contribute more money than he does.

Read full story
35 comments

Mom plans fake trip to Disneyworld to teach her children a harsh lesson about lying

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission.*. I’m no professional when it comes to childhood development, so I am not sure where or when children learn to lie to their parents, siblings, or others. The first time I remember my daughter Tori telling a whopper of a lie was when she was about five years old.

Read full story
15 comments

“I knew you could afford a great one.” Woman collects husbands for wedding rings and then divorces them

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a family member who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. This past fall my little sister Grace got married to my new brother-in-law, Rich. I was surprised and offended that more than one person asked whether it bothered me that my little sister was getting married before me. The fact was, it did and it didn’t bother me.

Read full story
13 comments

“I packed for you, can you be out by Sunday?” Man cheats and files for divorce, blindsiding wife of 20 years

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as told to me by a family member who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. In almost all of the cases of infidelity I’ve ever heard about, and it’s so sadly common, I’ve heard an awful lot of stories, it’s most often the cheating man who moves out of the house when his dalliances are exposed.

Read full story
56 comments

Comments / 0

Community Policy