This anon has never worked at a grocery store. And even if they have, they have never understood the reason why people buy $20 worth of chips.
Hello, Alicyn here coming at you from seven thousand dollars below poverty level and working in the grocery industry to tell you everything you need to know about food stamps, SNAP, EBT and WIC and why people buy the things they do.
Let’s talk about SNAP benefits first. SNAP stands for “Supplemental Nutrion Assistance Program. Under this program you can get anything from apples to oranges. This is also the umbrella program that EBT is under. It also provides cash and medical assistance. The most important thing about this is SNAP determines what you can and can’t buy with your food stamps. To anyone who knows what I’m talking about I’m talking about WIC. You get healthy stuff. It’s usually reserved for Women Infants and Children and it’s a pain in the goddamn ass because it’s for the cheapest item of each category which changes from grocery store to grocery store. Also, there is no fun allowed in the WIC category.
By the way; even living under poverty line currently does not qualify me for food stamps. That’s right, I can’t get any kind of food from the government, any government, because all of my bills are debts incurred by trying to get a degree which is considered a luxury. (by the way a heads up to anyone in college if you work retail to get you through college there is a good chance you will work retail forever so if it isn’t something you want to do please get out now). And I have an asset worth over 2k. That asset? My 401k. So from my paycheck, my weekly budget for food comes to $40. California offers me an amazing $16 a month to subsidize my food costs.
I DIGRESS.
Let’s talk about EBT which stands for Electronic Benefit Transfer which have both Cash and Food benefits on them.
What does this have to do with $20 worth of chips.
Have you ever been checking out someones groceries and you notice that they’re buy nothing but meat, or fish, or chips, or just a lot of one item. First of all, it’s none of your business. My roommate, who was 21,ate nothing but baby food and no one questioned her for it because she was rich and white.
If someone with food stamps is buying a lot of a certain item it is because they probably are sharing food stamps with someone else.
Now, I’m speaking for myself here. When I could qualify for food stamps it also happened that I could qualify for low income housing. When you qualify for low income housing, chances are; there are people around you that also qualify for SNAP benefits. I’ve always been a couponer, because I worked for a grocery store that loved coupons and the business it generated. I had a neighbor from Jamaica, she was very health conscious for her kids. She planned out her meals perfectly and she stretched every dollar of her food benefits. Yet, no matter what, it never seemed like she had enough money for the thing she liked the most; Ice cream. Well, when I had food stamps I only had $100 a month, which was only $25 a week. I couldn’t do it. I was eating a lot of soup and blocks of rice. Well, this lady invites me over for dinner and says to me “We’re starting a food pool. Do you wanna be in charge of ice cream?”
I say yeah; because I’m poor and hungry.
So every month, I bought $100 worth of ice cream when it went on sale buy one get one free. It was forty gallons of ice cream every month, sometimes more if there were coupons at one point I think I maxed out at over fifty five gallons of ice cream. I had people requesting ice cream flavors each month, we would do little ice cream taste tests of new flavors.
Now the legality of all this is questionable. Is it really okay to trade ice cream for three square meals a day? To that, pretty much everyone in my complex said yes, but keep it from the cops. There was a guy who bought only meat and yeah; there was probably a person who bought only chips (I didn’t like chips at the time).
And about the whole “Buy crabs thing” yeah they know it’s expensive. But you know what? You should be getting mad at the governmental rule that says a single working person can survive on less than $12k a year instead of getting mad at people who said “To hell with it, I’m buying crab today.” with the only form of income they can be certain of.
