Life of the Working Class

Semi-retired these days, I have a part-time job in a grocery store. As with almost every job before this one it is as a laborer. Similar to my previous such positions I am often placed in situations where I hear people talking, casually discussing their lives. Never in my life would I intentionally eavesdrop, but when you are quietly working and other people are talking nearby you cannot help but hear what they say.

A few days ago I was stocking shelves with produce—fresh vegetables, fruit, salads, and the like, and I heard a young woman talking to her son. The boy was about five or six years old. So his mom must have been very young when she had him because she couldn’t have been older than 23 or so.

The young woman was pushing one of the smaller grocery carts—the kind that’s about one-third the size of a normal cart. She was very carefully picking things out to put in there. I have noticed this is how people shop when they have little money and have to be sure not to put more than they can afford into the buggy. She was doing this. There was not much in it and she was not tossing things in there at random.

The boy had a small container of cut watermelon that his mom had told him he could have. He looked back at the shelf and noticed a larger container of it. He obviously liked watermelon and took down one of the larger plastic boxes. “Nanna gave us $30.00. Do you think I could get the big one?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, honey. But we already spent that money. We can’t afford that one.”

“Okay,” he said, and put it back.

After a little while they were gone, and I filed the experience there in the back of my mind with a million other such things that I would probably never recall.

About fifteen minutes later I was told I needed to go to the front of the store to a specific cash register. I did so, and as I got there I knew that it was to retrieve merchandise that someone had decided not to buy so that I could return it to the shelves. As I looked down at it, I realized that almost everything that young woman had placed into that puny shopping cart was lying on the checkout counter. Even the tiny container of cut watermelon for her little boy.

And every day people ask me why I am so angry. When they say this to me with these expressions of fat, complacent judgement on their stinking faces I want to punch them all in the teeth. This horrible thing that I saw is not rare. This nation is awash in human beings who are nearly homeless, or already so. We have more billionaires living in unimaginable luxury and greed than any nation has ever seen, and over half of our people are the barest step ahead of homelessness and starvation.

The next person who asks me why I am so angry is perhaps going to get their fucking ass kicked.