a confession and a tirade

Thursday's are my SHARE days and yesterday I should have just kept my big mouth shut and now I have to offer an apology to one of the other volunteers. This woman works in the clothing area supervising clients making their selections so I don't normally interact with her all that much. She's loud mouthed and pushy in my opinion (yes, I know, people have said the same about me) and I took an instant dislike to her when she first started volunteering which I admit is inherently unfair but I feel like I've sort of suppressed that over the last year or so and I try to be pleasant to her when we interact. Anyway last week because of the food shortage and the dwindling grant money to purchase food, J sent around a memo for us all to sign saying we would not be allowed to take any food purchased for SHARE or donated unless it was a perishable at the end of the day that we had no room to either refrigerate or freeze till the next week.

Now we all on occasion, some of us more than others, have helped ourselves to things that have been bought or donated especially at the end of the day when there are things like day old milk that we get from the dollar stores left over. We can give it out that day but we can't give it out the next week when it's a week out of date or if we get a lot of meat or fish or desserts that we don't have freezer space for it all or like the box of sausages that we couldn't give out because they weren't pre-packaged. But this is all done at the end of the day, not at 11 AM strolling back and helping yourself to whatever meat you want from the freezer because you have guests coming for the weekend. I rarely take stuff for myself though I have. 95% of what I take goes to a neighbor at the other end of the street who has a raft of grandkids she cares for.

So yesterday, this woman came back to the food area where we were all standing around in between food orders wanting candy, gotta have candy for her sweet tooth (and we did get a butt load of chocolate bars that morning from one of the dollar stores) and that's when I opened my big mouth and told her that this food wasn't for us, that we all signed the memo last week about not taking stuff, and if she wanted candy go buy it. When she started complaining about how much candy cost I walked back to my station removing myself from the conversation. And here's the thing, it was a candy bar, not a rack of ribs or something equally egregious, several people had already helped themselves to a candy bar or a small bag of chips and I didn't say anything to them.

Then she came back to where I was, wanted to know what was my problem, that if I have a problem with her to say it to her face (which is what I did I thought) and you take stuff too and I work hard and deserve what I take and I put money in the jar. I wasn't about to argue with her over who takes what, when, or for what reason, I just turned my back on her and went about my job until she finally went back to her station.

Because it really wasn't about her wanting a chocolate bar.

Ten minutes before, she had been going around to every volunteer with her phone telling people to be sure and vote for her man and, big surprise, it was a picture of Trump. When she approached me I just shook my head and walked away and she walked over to the guys, same thing, saying he's better than who we have now destroying the country, heading us into a recession. I managed to keep my mouth shut then because of course there's no convincing a MAGAt who only gets their information from Fox or OAN that Trump is pure evil and doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself and intends if elected again to consolidate power in the presidency, throw his detractors in jail, fill every position with people loyal only to him instead of the constitution or law, and fulfill his dream of being a dictator like Putin or Erdogan or Kim Jon Ung all of whom he admires; a convicted rapist, a vindictive liar who refused to accept defeat in a fair and secure election and called his thugs to overrun the Capitol to kill or otherwise incapacitate his vice president and Speaker Pelosi and prevent the peaceful transfer of power that has been a hallmark of our democratic system of government, twice impeached for extortion and dereliction of duty, a criminal indicted four times on 91 counts, who stole highly classified sensitive documents concerning our national security and refused to return them (why exactly do you think the Saudis gave Kushner $2 BILLION), who has had all his business certificates rescinded in NY for fraud and that's just a very short list. Besides not wanting to get into an inappropriate and useless argument with a MAGAt, I do not bring politics into SHARE, none of us do, but me personally, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW if any of my fellow volunteers support Trump, a man who is ordering the far right 'Freedom Caucus' controlled House to shut down the government in a bid to get the investigations and indictments against him to disappear regardless of how it will negatively affect hundreds of thousands of federal workers, our national security, and our standing on the world stage. I do not want to know because it will permanently negatively affect my opinion of them.

So next week I have to go apologize to this woman for jumping on her over a candy bar because it's really none of my business what she takes or who she votes for.