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I would often dress nice (Goodwill clothes and nice clothes from when I could afford them--the clothes you keep don't just vanish from your closet when you become poor) for job interviews and then drop by the grocery story to buy food on food stamps. If I was holding onto my friend (often kept my cane at home for interviews cause I didn't want blindness to be the only thing employers saw about me) and using tactile sign, to casual on-lookers, we just looked like a couple holding hands. No one would have any idea that I was deaf, blind, and broke. I wonder how many people judged me and assumed all kinds of wrong things.
I know for a fact that people would often assume he was my boyfriend (cause they often asked us questions like "are you two engaged?"), when in fact he was just a good friend who learned sign language for me and offered to SSP for me, especially for job interviews. Not to mention people would often judge me based on having an Apple computer, and thought I wasn't really as poor as I was, but what they didn't realize was that I was given the computer as a gift. My friend also got me the braille display as a gift with a big check he got as a prize. So while I did have about $2,000 in technology in my bag every day, I was living on savings and waiting for SSI to come through and using that technology to try to get a job. When my savings dwindled to nothing, I had to apply for emergency food stamps. For what it's worth, as soon as I got a job, I reported my hours and decreased the amount I was received in SSI. Then when I got a job with a livable wage, I closed my SSI case entirely because I actually prefer to make my own living to relying on government assistance.
To all the people who think that they have the right to judge people on welfare/other benefits:
It's easy to assume the worst about people, but a lot of people are going through rough patches now, and are in need of temporary assistance. Yes, there are users and abusers, but they are a minority, and we shouldn't judge everyone who needs assistance based on that minority. It's easy to judge people and say that they are mooching and so on, but tomorrow it could be you. If you are living check to check, all it takes is a car accident, a medical diagnosis, a company downsizing, etc., for you to become one of the people you judge. You might still have nice clothes from when you had a job. You might still have a nice car that you bought and owned, from before going broke. And people will then look at your clothes and car and assume you don't deserve the assistance you need. So if you are in a place right now where you can judge poor people because you're not there yourself, just be grateful you're not in that place, and remember that you're not better than other people--just luckier. Yes, some people are lazier and some are harder workers, but that doesn't always correlate directly with how well off someone is. There are people born into riches who never have to work a day in their life and people who work hard to climb the ladder, only to be met with glass ceiling after glass ceiling. The only person whose life you are in a position to judge is your own because you know your whole life story. When it comes to other people, there will always be parts of the story you don't know, pieces of the puzzle you're missing, that will make your judgments uninformed and therefore most likely, inaccurate.
Hope things get better for you. I am in my own rut as well.
If a person has a legit disability they should have a handicap placard. I am pissed off about all the abusers of the system. Sorry to hear about your lyme disease, singlelady.
It is not all that hard to observe on a fairly routine basis people who are taking advantage of welfare, WIC, workers comp and handicap placards.
In Texas it's pretty easy to get a doctor to sign off on a placard so having one doesn't necessarily mean that you are legitimately disabled. A doctor once offered to sign off on a temp placard when I sprained my ankle. Seriously.
So today I am at the grocery store with only one woman in line in front of me. I think hooray my lucky day. WRONG! She is buying about 20 jars of baby food a couple boxes of dry baby cereal and several cans of baby formula. Then I see her hand the check out clerk several WIC checks.
If you have ever been caught behind one of these transactions it takes considerable time. Apparently each check is only good for a certain dollar amount and the clerk must seperate the groceries into groups for each check. ARRRG.
Well to top it off the woman is Hispanic and speaks little english. So my blood pressure begins to rise. I suspect I am witnessing another abuse of our government assistance system. Well she finally gets done and leaves ahead of me.
As I depart the store having used my debit card in a matter of seconds guess what I see. The youngish woman who appears to be in good health, loading her free food into a new Ford Expedition. On top of that she is parked in the handicap space and has a handicap placard hanging from her mirror. Oh and the Expedition had some very nice custom wheels on it.
This woman is playing the system for all she can. And it ticks me off to no end. When is the government going to tighten up the qualifications for all this free crap that we are paying for? She is probably getting housing assistance too.
It amazes me how many people have stood in line behind someone who uses them.
In my 60 years on this planet (but just 50 in this country), I have never stood behind anyone who has used Food Stamps or WIC coupons. Doesn't matter where I've shopped, in the city, the suburbs, or miles away from either.
In Texas it's pretty easy to get a doctor to sign off on a placard so having one doesn't necessarily mean that you are legitimately disabled. A doctor once offered to sign off on a temp placard when I sprained my ankle. Seriously.
How is that not legitimate? If it's a temporary placard for a temporary disability? Do people have to be practically dying before they're eligible for priority parking/seating, etc.?
If I were her, I'd be on the phone to the police station, making a report against the bigoted stalker who went out of their way to follow me to my car.
I would have whipped out my camera phone to take her photo.
In Texas it's pretty easy to get a doctor to sign off on a placard so having one doesn't necessarily mean that you are legitimately disabled. A doctor once offered to sign off on a temp placard when I sprained my ankle. Seriously.
My husband broke his foot and had to be on crutches with no weight-bearing for six weeks. He got a placard, but didn't use it much. I had hip replacement surgery in December, got a placard for 3 months. I didn't always use it, either.
How is that not legitimate? If it's a temporary placard for a temporary disability? Do people have to be practically dying before they're eligible for priority parking/seating, etc.?
MAYBE because a sprained ankle is nowhere near the problem of someone who is confined to a wheelchair.
really? A sprained ankle? It's a temporary discomfort. The number of people with permanent disabling handicaps needing to park at a disabled spot far exceeds the need for a person with a sprained ankle. I take 60mgs of morphine daily, at a minimum just to get through the day, to be able to walk a little bit, and to work. Without it, the pain is great enough from my permanent injuries to inhibit my ability to function.
AND.... There are people worse off than I, and you would park in the spot they need, because of a sprained ankle?
MAYBE because a sprained ankle is nowhere near the problem of someone who is confined to a wheelchair.
really? A sprained ankle? It's a temporary discomfort. The number of people with permanent disabling handicaps needing to park at a disabled spot far exceeds the need for a person with a sprained ankle. I take 60mgs of morphine daily, at a minimum just to get through the day, to be able to walk a little bit, and to work. Without it, the pain is great enough from my permanent injuries to inhibit my ability to function.
AND.... There are people worse off than I, and you would park in the spot they need, because of a sprained ankle?
That's why the placard is temporary. I don't think having a sprained ankle equates to needing a wheelchair, but it still makes getting from car seat to front door more difficult. Someone who doesn't have their reading glasses cannot read the menu any more than I can as a blind person. While the degree of disability overall may differ, the end result in that particularly situation is the same--the person has difficult making it from the car to the door and therefore needs to be able to park closer.
If you are able to tolerate your pain to walk the full distance, more power to you. I have a pretty high pain tolerance as well. I have had severe chronic pain for years. That said, I also realize that maybe to someone who is used to being able-bodied and pain-free, a sprained ankle might feel more disabling. I know for sure that most sighted people would feel disabled by the loss of their sight, or even by having the lights turned off, even though I don't personally and actually prefer the lights off.
Is it fair for you and me to impose our standards of disability onto another person? Should I expect others to function as well as I do with the lights off, just because I can? Is it fair for either of us to expect others to function well through chronic pain just because you and I can? Is that not something we should leave up to the doctors and DMV to determine? Disability is about how well someone functions--which is highly individual.
I choose not to use a placard, even though I'm eligible for several reasons. 1) I don't get in a car (as the passenger) often enough to really justify getting one. 2) I would only go out if my pain level was tolerable enough to walk from a car to the store to begin with. 3) I personally do choose to leave those spots to people in wheelchairs and who have disabilities that require them to have the extra width and ramps provided. But that is my personal judgment, and not a judgment that I impose on anyone else.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nimchimpsky
That's why the placard is temporary. I don't think having a sprained ankle equates to needing a wheelchair, but it still makes getting from car seat to front door more difficult. Someone who doesn't have their reading glasses cannot read the menu any more than I can as a blind person. While the degree of disability overall may differ, the end result in that particularly situation is the same--the person has difficult making it from the car to the door and therefore needs to be able to park closer.
Is it fair for you and me to impose our standards of disability onto another person? Should I expect others to function as well as I do with the lights off, just because I can? Is it fair for either of us to expect others to function well through chronic pain just because you and I can? Is that not something we should leave up to the doctors and DMV to determine? Disability is about how well someone functions--which is highly individual.
I choose not to use a placard, even though I'm eligible for several reasons. 1) I don't get in a car (as the passenger) often enough to really justify getting one. 2) I would only go out if my pain level was tolerable enough to walk from a car to the store to begin with. 3) I personally do choose to leave those spots to people in wheelchairs and who have disabilities that require them to have the extra width and ramps provided. But that is my personal judgment, and not a judgment that I impose on anyone else.
I can vouch for the sprained ankle issue. Last year, I slipped on some ice and sprained my ankle real bad. I needed crutches and still had to drive 45 min each way for work. Getting into my sedan as a 6'5 guy was already difficult and the sprained ankle in the cast with crutches made it even moreso.
My mother has a permanent diabled sticker on her car. Though you look at her and see a lively late 50s woman, she is medically disabled with sinus issues and chronic pain in from her military days. Lesson here is not everyone has a disability that is obviously visable.
People complain that there is no accountability with food stamps -- that people can use them as a government subsidy to unhealthy food that the government is in no business of subsidizing.
With WIC, the government is VERY specific about what you can buy and it has to be essential foods -- baby formula, milk, cereal, eggs, etc. Unfortunately the only way to make sure the money is spent on specific items is those tedious checks.
I've never been behind one in line but I did work at a supermarket in high school. We were told by management to be very careful and make sure that the products were exactly what the checks specified as the store could get in trouble if WIC checks were misused.
Sure -- but there is absolutely NO accountability with WIC when it comes to being disabled and unable to work.
By far most people living off welfare handouts are able bodied. Most are NOT blind, NOT deaf, NOT quadriplegiac, NOT IQ under 70. In fact most are so very able bodied and so full of health they are spitting out kids faster than the people who do work for a living.
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