The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

This past Saturday afternoon, the lovely Mrs. Gammons was standing in a check-out line at WalMart.  Ahead of her in line was a woman with four kids and two big carts filled with groceries.  After all her items were bagged, she handed the cashier her EBT card to pay.  (EBT stands for "Electronic Benefits Transfer", those benefits commonly known as food stamps.)  The cashier informed her that the EBT system had been down all day and as a result her card could not be accepted.

The thoroughly embarrassed woman was pulled out of the line, along with her kids and all her stuff.  An employee unloaded her carts while she rummaged through her purse, found about $30 in cash, and tried to figure out what she could buy and what she'd have to leave behind, while everyone stared at her.

The Good:  Mrs. Gammons asked the cashier for the total of the woman's bill and was told it was about $150, all groceries, no fluff.  "Let her keep it all.  I'll pay for it," said Mrs. Gammons.  "No, you won't," said a young man behind her in the line.  "I'll split it with you."  And split it they did, which left the woman almost speechless with gratitude.  The dear wife and the anonymous young man received hugs from her kids, and ought to receive some sort of medal too.  Damn near brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

The Bad:  Since this problem with the EBT system first popped up in the morning, you'd think that store management might have subsequently posted warning signs at the entrances and cashier stations.  Surely this woman wasn't the first instance that day of an EBT transaction.  (After all, this was at WalMart.)  But  even though a manager said there was "a note on the bulletin board in the employee break room", it just didn't occur to them to try to notify their customers in advance.  Nah, just let 'em pile up in a pissed-off cluster at check-out.  Friggin' briliiant!

The Ugly:  When Mrs. Gammons arrived home and told me this story, she said there was widespread speculation at the store that this EBT fiasco was the result of the government shutdown, which sounded plausible enough.  A quick web search revealed it actually due to an automatic update to the Xerox-based EBT system that had somehow gone wrong and temporarily crashed across most of the country.  That same web search also showed a multitude of nasty comments from idiots who took the opportunity to applaud the momentary stoppage of access to government benefits, to denounce the needy for their need, and to recite the anecdotes to show how it's just all one big scam -- "I saw this woman pay with food stamps and she had a lot of jewelry/a smart phone/tattoos/a nice car/fancy hair and nails/a Gucci bag, etc., etc."   Whatever.

It's as if the haters are saying, "If you're poor enough for food stamps, food is all you get.  Nothing else.  How dare you eat and have a phone!"

It illustrates the enduring meanness of the arch-conservatives doing what they love to do -- judge and punish.

They simply cannot conceive of the shoe ever being on the other foot.