velha amargurada @fuyuteki - Tumblr Blog

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

inkskinned

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

dyingroses

cheeseanonioncrisps

“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental, on your humble flat, or help you at the automat.”

Like literally the most famous song about how much girls love jewellry is just explaining the importance of getting jewellry for when your partner leaves you penniless and alone.

ohheyheyitsjj

The founder of Girl Scouting in the US, Juliette Gordon Low, funded her first troop by selling her pearl necklace, which was her only belonging after her husband died and left everything to his mistress.

She founded Girl Scouts to teach girls self-sufficiency so they wouldn’t have to go through what she went through when her husband died and she didn’t know how to take care of herself.

penrosesun

While we’re on the subject, let’s please also remember that historically disenfranchised communities who had to worry about frequently being run out of town often bought expensive jewelry with their limited funds not because they were greedy or tacky or classless, but rather because you can’t sew a real estate investment into the lining of your coat, and the powers that be can’t freeze a diamond necklace the way that they can freeze a bank account.

orteil42

given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that

theconcealedweapon

"You'll put politics over family?"

You're damn right I will.

I have a transgender sister. Another one of my sisters has been harassing her with Bible verses and telling her that she's going to hell.

She's clearly willing to put politics over family. So why the hell shouldn't I?

kosmogrl

"whats your 5 year plan?" buddy I nearly go insane thinking about what I should have for dinner

dragoncarrion

Anytime i see a bunch of pride flags i have to restrain myself from saying "where mexico" bc i doubt anyone will know I'm referencing this

tortol

picture i got at pride last week; here mexico

ellie-insertsurnamehere

This is very dumb but hey

boitterfly

it’s so special to me that so much of fan culture is textual analysis for the love of the game. like thank god there are people in my phone who are also thinking about this thing i love so much that they are writing transformative fiction as character studies and setting clips of the show to music with theme-relevant lyrics and writing long text posts analyzing every line of dialogue like!! yay!!!

arowitharrows

I feel like people struggle to understand that my life as an aorace person is not centered around an absence of relationships. There is no romance shaped void that I am trying to live with, or live around, or which my life's purpose is to fill somehow.

I go to university and I go to work and I volunteer in my community and in the in-between moments I drink tea with my friends and I plant tomatoes on my balcony and there is no need for anything else. There is no room for anything else anyway.

When I am asked how I deal with 'the hole in my life' or what I do with 'all my free time', I know these questions are not about me at all. They are a reflection of the person asking.

thatsthebirds

Its kind of asking how you cope with the lack of parking spaces when someone doesnt own a car

ace-of-bass

Ooh I love this analogy because not owning a car does come with problems (at least in the US typically), namely that US infrastructure is so reliant on cars that not owning one means that you deal with other problems, like lack of bike lanes, infrequent public transit, people always assuming you can drive places, etc. Aro/ace people do face problems due to amatonormativity in society, such as inaffordability of places to live alone (because it's assumed you'll live with a roommate until you're a "real adult" and live with a partner and also because of capitalism), lack of ways to meet new people that aren't specifically focused on dating, and people always asking when you'll settle down, aren't you lonely, don't you miss having a partner? as OP talked about.

Like, there are problems that one encounters as a carless person, and there are problems I've encountered as an aroace person. But the problem as a carless person isn't lack of parking spaces and the problem as an aroace person isn't lack of a relationship.