Author: Olivia

It's always “you wouldn't be so poor if you didn't buy a coffee” or “if you didn't get fast food once a week for lunch” or “if you didn't waste your money on that game console” as if getting ourselves nice things is a moral failing. We don't have a living wage, we work long hours and wind up with nothing to show for it because we can't pay off our rent, our bills, our loans, and still feed ourselves with just our one minimum wage job. And we're seen as stupid or selfish for it. Why shouldn't we get to do nice things for ourselves after spending most of our waking hours in hell? Why is rewarding ourselves for our hard work bad? Why is it our fault for wanting any kind of positivity or relief when it's the people we work for who won't pay us enough to…

When I was a teenager I worked the checkouts at a local supermarket. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like the bosses so I installed a personal policy that everyone coming down my checkout would get one item for free. I just didn’t ring it up. Sometimes I’d make the beep noise for funny. And diapers were always free. One packet per customer. No one ever said anything but it gave me an enormous sense of well being. Beep 🙂