Some years ago while working as a line cook in a nice restaurant (not on Michelin's radar by any means, but respectable) I looked around the kitchen and saw myself at fifty. I wasn't working in the field I had trained for in college, but I was making decent enough money. I was good at what I did, I was creative, but still...did I want to be slinging hash at fifty? Could I still handle the stress twenty years from now?
That is when I hatched my plan to rip off all you tax payers. Working is for chumps, I figured. I'll just go back to school, sweep up those Pell grants, take out some student loans, food stamps, whatever, so my reasoning went. You idiots make more money than you know what to do with, so it is my turn to kick back and live the good life ... on your dime.
And how sweet it was.
I quit my job and enrolled in college full time. But right off the bat my plan ran into a snag. It turns out that I was making too much money as a line cook and didn't qualify for any financial aid. Not to worry, I had savings and I would just spend that until I was broke, then they would have to just start forking over the money. I got myself a cushy fifteen hour-a-week work study job that paid me fifty cents over minimum wage. I bet you didn't know that chumps, you are paying lazy ass student MORE than minimum wage. How I use to laugh at you bleeding heart liberals. Here I was sitting in the basement of somebody I didn't even know, wrapped in a blanket to stay warm studying macroeconomics, while my friends with jobs were paying for it. And they were too stupid to even realize I was ripping them off, probably because they were too busy working and hanging out at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort. Who cares, I was living the good life.
My plan finally paid off because my saving only last so long and were now exhausted. The school HAD to give me grants. Ha ha ha ha ha! They just handed me a check! That check not only paid for my tuition, but also more than half the cost of my books. Hell, I took a chunk of that free money and paid down my credit card and bought all of my books that way. But still, fifteen hours-a-week work study and grants weren't cutting it. It was cramping my life style. I mean sure I had my top ramen and baked potatoes flavored with ketchup, mustard and pickle relish packets, but it just wasn't enough. There is another thing I bet you didn't know, you're paying for those little packets of fancy ketchup, and people like me are just scarfing them up for free. That's right, keep working your forty hour jobs and just hand your relish over to me. But I digress, it turns out your stool turns an odd shade of black if all you eat is potatoes, so I applied for food stamps. Let's face it, you can only eat week old dry English muffins that you scored outside of a food bank that was closed by the time you got there, before you want some milk to wash it down with. It was easy. I told them my story, and the state just handed me twenty dollars worth of food stamps. And those twenty dollar booklets of food stamps just kept rolling in.
But, you can only buy food with those stamps, and I had holes in my shoes. Crap! Crap crap crap. I tried putting old drivers licenses and cardboard inside my shoes which did kept glass out of my feet, but my socks were still always wet. I was forced to fall back on my cooking skills and take a twenty hour-a-week part time minimum wage job cooking in a drug and alcohol rehab center. As a side note, I bet you didn't know that those rehab centers are getting free government food too. I mean Christ, those court ordered miscreants, who should have been in jail, are living in dorm style rooms getting touchy-feely counseling while eating food stolen from your table.
At that point I gave up the food stamps (I couldn't buy beer with them anyway) and worked thirty five hours-a-week while going to school full time. It is hard to believe, but even with my grants and cushy work study job, I still wanted you to give me more money. That is when Kristen, a single mother studying nursing I worked with at the work study job, told me about student loans. Sweet! They were guaranteed. They had to give them to me. Cha-ching! Gawd, how stupid can you people get? You just handed me MORE money. There was a slight set back in my plan of updating my wardrobe so that I had clothes I could actually wear to a job interview. It turns out if you work two part time jobs, neither one of them alone earns you enough money to have taxes taken out, so when April rolled around, I had to give back most of the loan to the IRS. Shit! Oh well, that is what thrift stores are for right. They are a great place to buy an ill fitted suit.
My plan was working great, living large on your dime. But then things almost took a turn for the worse, I might actually graduate. Kristen did. She had to leave the good life, and take a job at a dialysis center and move her kid to some two bedroom apartment with it's own door and bathroom. Was that my fate too? Fortunately I got a last minute reprieve when the ONE class I need to graduate wasn't offered that semester. Whew, that was close. But the handwriting was on the wall. The next semester I couldn't avoid it any longer and I graduated with honors, just missed out on the Presidents Award. So, screw them! I didn't even go to my graduation, I went to a job interview in Seattle instead.
What the hell went wrong? A year before I was living large, goofing off, riding by bicycle in freezing rain, and now I was working in a 26 story office build in downtown Seattle. I remember sitting in the lounge at the Crystal Mountain Ski Resort with my friends, fighting back tears as I sipped my micro brew, wondering just where my plan had failed.
That job ultimately lead to a job with a growing company in Portland that wasn't about to fire me and I couldn't quit because than I would not get unemployment. FUCK! Today, ten years later, I am barely eking out just over $40,000 dollars a year in a job I basically created myself and look forward to going to.
My dream of living off your money didn't pan out. So you know what, screw you Kristen and all you single mothers who want to go school and study nursing. You are not getting a God damn red cent from me!