Lobster Bisque or What the Fuck?
2021 04 13 | journal
I don’t talk about it much because it’s a deeply depressing section of my life, but I used to have to go to food banks because ODSP sure wasn’t providing, and I couldn’t find work.
Every time I’d go to the food banks there’d be at least one peculiar item in the allotment. I wish I’d kept track of them all, but the one that I cannot forget is the lobster bisque mix. Lobster bisque can include chicken broth, clam juice, half and half, tomato paste, butter, Worcestershire sauce, corn starch, carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms, white wine, brandy, parsley, olive oil, garlic, bay leaf, chives, salt, cayenne, tarragon, coriander, various other seasonings, and, of course, the lobster.
I’m sure some of those things sound like basics to you, so you assume that others just have them. You don’t think about the fact they might not. I can assure you that anyone on social assistance who must regularly depend on the food bank system does not have most of those items on the best of days, and very likely not even basics like pepper or salt. Milk and butter are luxuries, half and half is as rare as hen’s teeth and wouldn’t be going in a soup even if you did have it. Fresh vegetables? That’s a dream-like unreality many days. The kindness of those who donate to food banks is appreciated, but what they donate, and what does not get donated along with what is, is, to say the very least, a problem. The sort of thing I just mentioned happens all the time. Items get donated, but the necessary attendant items might never be. Mac & Cheese requires butter, or margarine, or milk. Soup stocks can’t make a soup without the bulk ingredients, like vegetables. Hamburger Helper needs hamburger. Think about the number of things you eat that even coming out of a package still need help.
The response that gets me the most are the knee-jerk well they should just be grateful they have what they have lot. You know what? They are. But the way people say that is incredibly nauseating and unfeeling, as if they truly believe that those in need deserve to live in that need, and as if they believe that those in need want to live in that need. No one wants to subsist on a protracted poor diet that fuels health problems and depression, which impacts their ability to gain an education and work, which leaves them in the poverty they were to begin with, never mind those who can’t work at all and have no hope of it due to a disability or illness. I do wonder what it is that causes someone to wake up every day, look in the mirror at themselves, and be completely comfortable with the fact they think any human being deserves to live in poverty and not have a decent meal three times a day.
If you’ve gotten this far I want you to remember when you donate to the food banks, to either donate basics like salt, pepper, powdered milk, etc., or donate money so the food banks can buy those things. The basic food items are wonderful, but some of them are useless without their necessary counterparts.
I hated going to the food banks. I hated coming home with bags of garbage processed food, junk food, and nothing fresh. I hated coming home with stuff it’s clear others donated because they were throwing it out not donating it. I hated coming home with bags of things past their dates. I hated coming home with things I hated and didn’t want to eat but had to because there was nothing else. I ate garbage, and felt like garbage.
If you’ve gotten this far and you believe it’s okay to leave other humans live that way, then you might have more garbage inside you than I did during that time. If you’re angry I said that, too bad.
Work and the Rest
It's very easy for people to assume that simply because you want a job, and there are jobs available, that it's a zero sum situation that only remains unsolved because the job-seeker chooses not to solve it. That's rigid thinking that some folks can't seem to get past, but they really do need to learn how to if problems like poverty and food scarcity are ever to be solved. My most recent job search includes 77 applications, only three of which got a response. One I couldn't take because they required someone who could drive/had a car, another because they decided to hire internally, and a third because it was going to require dealing with stock that my vision wouldn't have allowed me to do.
People are looking, and employers might be looking, but those relationships aren't happening because there's more people looking for work than are offering, and not all people are suitable for what jobs are being offered. If employers are still complaining they can't find people to work for them, they're going to have to look at what they're offering in compensation and benefits, and maybe up their game. If you're offering a low wage for a hard job, in a work atmosphere that's poor, with a bad boss, no benefits, and you can't find workers? Well, that's on you, and it's your job to offer people incentives enough to entice them, not their job to be grateful and put up with you.
As for the disabled, well, sure, employers are required to accommodate you. You know what they aren't required to do though? Hire you.
And on the note of accommodation itself, not everything can be accommodated, nor everyone's disability worked around. No amount of accommodation is going to work around my vision issues enough to make me able to drive a car, for example. I would also find it impossible to believe that any employer would hire someone whose disability or illness could cause unpredictably timed and equally unpredictably long amounts of down time.
You need to remember that work is not a zero sum game.
You need to remember that not every solution will solve every problem, nor solve it the same way. So, if you're thinking that if you can do it that means everyone can. Don't. That is not math that computes.
You need to remember that if you have had a problem that you've solved, it doesn't mean that those problems no longer exist. They do.
If you believe that if it's not happening to you then it's not your problem. Don't. It is your problem.
If you don't want to pay taxes that are used for protracted health care problems that could be more simply solved by eradicating the need for them to exist, then pay taxes to make sure they don't. Give people enough decent food to eat and education, and those protracted health care problems will drop like a stone.
Pay taxes to cover post-secondary education and training so it's free so that no graduate is saddled with $30k worth of debt as a 22-year-old kid going into their first entry level job. Post-secondary education is not a luxury. It's an absolute necessity to progress in the culture we live in.
If you're one of those people that thinks that because you had it hard others need to. Stop. That's sadistic. There is no inherent value in making a young kid suffer through four years of university if they don't need to suffer, or through a three-year college program, or through an apprenticeship, or whatever else it is that person has chosen to do.
If you are one of those people that thinks it's not your problem or your job to provide for someone else's dreams, you should consider it from this perspective. If you want a doctor in your society to take care of your ills, or an accountant to do your taxes, or a teacher to educate your kids, then it really is your job to make sure you've provided a situation to make sure those things can exist.
I can't recall of it was Plato or Socrates, but one of them had a theory about the drain that the ill have on society, the elderly too I think. That they should be, to put it politely, excised. Let them die off so they are no longer a drain. I'm sure that concept will appeal to some. But, if you are that sort of person that thinks that way, if you're of the just let 'em die bunch, I feel great pity for the misery that is your soul. You can take your Social Darwinism, or whatever twisted miserly theory moves you, and stick it where the sun will never shine.