Money, Manners and A Dream

It seems like nowadays you're either struggling to get by, or you have enough cash to laugh haughtily and wipe your face with hundred dollar bills. From my own personal experiences and people I know from the ones barely scraping by having multiple people sleeping in one room to a distant uncle who kept encouraging everyone to have shots of Patron and paid for a hefty restaurant bill while not even batting an eye.

I think we've heard it all, how older folk are saying we "youngin's" are lazy and how they had a house and all these material things at a young age, but if you look at how the minimum wage has stayed the same while everything else around us has soared in pricing you'd have to literally work your fingers to the bone while working three jobs just the have what they had.

I have a family member, while not sharing names, who works from noon to sometimes two am and goes in on their days off. They're practically the companies punching bag. He works so hard on his days off all he does is lay in his bed in pain with blistered feet, and for what? His bring home is just under my own husbands who is on salary and is a spray technician for lawns.

I would ask how some people can be okay with it, but knowing what I know, we usually have no choice. The cards life dealt each person are different and always changing, no one persons is ever the same.

How is it we are so okay and complacent with how it is today? Because the older rich people are scared of change? But then we call the people crazy when they want a live-able wage and when they quit you're angry 'cause now your favorite fast food joint is understaffed and your fried food is slow to come out.

As someone who has worked those kinds of jobs as a cashier to a carhop, I can say I've met hundreds of people and it's always the young ones who are nice. I can't say how many times an older person has cursed or complained to me about the service or the lack of an item that our store doesn't even carry, yet somehow it's all my fault.

I loathe working for businesses. My dream to one day have my own business, or at least something like that. I have this little crack-nut idea that one day I will have a little pepper farm and some sheep. I don't want to be some stores punching bag that they can replace the next day, but you can't have your own business when you're barely scraping by because just to live is already a few thousand a month.

Weather you believe it or not, being poor is so darn expensive. It's just so easier to get cheap junk when you know the healthier option costs more. It's such a viscous cycle that I hope to break, or at least my children do. I'm hoping that not far in the future we can accept the minimum wage is crap and fast food and retail employees aren't door mats for the more entitled generation, which isn't us younger people.

I have a lot of crazy hopes. World peace, clean water, clean air, a decent living wage and a little pepper farm with some sheep. Maybe one day at least one of those dreams can come true.