Food Stamps and Other Badges of Shame

So I'm standing in the Park Slope Food Co-op, having just finished unloading my groceries out of the cart and the woman doing check-out says, "Do you know how to do EBT on the computer? Do I just push 'total'? What do you usually do?"

I shake my head, "Sorry, this is my first time using this card."

She smiles, "This is my first time too." She asks the man behind her, but he seems a little unsure so then she hollers over to the check-out person behind me, "Hey! Do you know how to process food stamps?" Only to me it sounds like "LOOK OVER HERE AT THIS LAYABOUT BITCH WHO'S TOO LAZY TO GET A JOB AND IS USING OUR HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS TO BUY HER ORGANIC APPLES!!!" The check-out person is nice enough, I'm sure she doesn't mean to call attention to me. But she's not the first that afternoon to advertise my situation across the crowded co-op floor. She's the second. The first was the cashier, when I tried out my card with one item to make sure it worked. The cashier said "Food Stamps? You're paying with food stamps?" Only it sounded more like, "FOOD STAMPS? FUCKING WELFARE MOM." Then a third person, another cashier, also asked more than once, in a loud voice, if I was paying with food stamps. I don't know if this is due to the insensitivity of these three workers, the noise in the co-op, if they were truly judging me, or if this has to do with the co-op's new debit card system, but it sucks.

At this co-op, everyone who shops there is required to work there for three hours every four weeks. So although some people are more professional than others, this isn't their day job by any means. When I used to do check-out, before the new debit card system, I was merely required to ask of every shopper, "Are you paying with cash or EBT?" EBT, which stands for "Electronic Benefit Transfer" didn't sound so demeaning. It just sounded like another way of paying. And actually, Food Stamps are no longer called that. According to the Department of Agriculture, "As of Oct. 1, 2008, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the new name for the federal Food Stamp Program." This afternoon's shopping experience made me want to do my grocery shopping at our local supermarket instead, where the food is more expensive and not nearly as healthy, there when people pull out their EBT cards, no one bats an eyelash.

Without going into detail about our particular situation, all I can say is that Big Joe works very hard, lately seven days a week, and I am looking for a job. I may not be working at a jobby job but I only sleep six hours a night, and only one of the hours that I'm awake is spent idly - reading the newspapers on the internet. Although we've always been frugal, in the past four months we've gone beyond our usual thriftiness. We haven't gone to movies, or bought books, or gone out to dinner. We stopped buying treats like the occasional cookie or scone. We never hire babysitters. We haven't bought new clothes in a very long time. We don't go on vacation, or spend money on alcohol or cigarettes or drugs of any kind. Big Joe rides his bike everywhere so we just spend money on a metrocard for me. We're not working the system. If I could find suitable employment, I would be working. And yet I feel so very ashamed. No, ASHAMED. Capital letters. I mean I've lived here for 15 years, worked, paid taxes. Been an upstanding citizen even when I technically wasn't. But when I Googled "When will I get my EBT card?" after we waited and waited and it failed to arrive in the mail; I found the answer on Yahoo Answers, and below was a comment with many expletives that went something along the lines of, "Why don't you get a job and stop spreading your legs for every man, and popping out babies?"

When I was a teenager I volunteered at a Food Bank in Vancouver, and the people who volunteered with me were upset that I was volunteering there but didn't need a bag of groceries myself. Because they all did. And volunteering there was how they dealt with their feelings of shame. I didn't understand that then, and was mystified by their hostility, but it all became quite clear this afternoon.

I've judged people paying with EBT cards at Food Dimensions. Judging their bottles of soda and chips and boxes of Entenmann's cakes. And when I worked as a check out worker at the co-op I've looked at the person paying with an EBT card and thought, "They don't look like they need food stamps." So now I'm on the other side. And that's good. I'm learning to have even more empathy. Because you just never know what life's going to hand you. One day you're having cocktails, shopping at designer sample sales and taking cabs (not that I've done that in at least ten years) and the next you're collecting food stamps.