Tales From The Toybox

I don’t often complain about my job, but every now and then it really gets to me and I just have to vent a little. Overall I love my job. I love the work itself, I LOVE the hours, I enjoy my co-workers (some of which I’ve worked with for 6 years now)…I really don’t have a lot of reason to complain. It’s the perfect job for a mom! I work 4 hours a day during the afternoon and half of the time that I’m gone my kids are home with their daddy napping and not stuck in some daycare. I get all the school holidays off and a good part of the summer off. It’s perfect…except for every now and then.

Take yesterday, for example. Aside from the technology and training portion of my job, one of my main responsibilities is approving and processing applications for the National School Lunch Program. This program provides either free or reduced-price meals for students who qualify. In order to qualify for the program you must meet the income guidelines…it’s a very simple process. Unfortunately, you don’t even have to be honest about your income because unless there is something very suspicious on the application I won’t even ask for verification. We do have a verification process at the beginning of each school year, but for the most part we are required to accept a parent’s word and process their application even if they claim they only make $1/month.

So yesterday I received an email from an elementary school counselor asking how I can help a student at her school get on the lunch program. The child has built up quite a negative balance charging meals, and the school has been forced to offer only a peanut butter (no jelly) sandwich. The cafeteria staff has sent home numerous Free/Reduced applications but the father, who is single, refuses to fill them out and send them in. To make matters worse, there is a history of physical abuse with this child. The school is fearful of contacting the father by phone to request that he 1) either pay the balance and begin sending lunch money to school with his child, or 2) complete one of the many applications that have been sent home, because of the risk of the father retaliating and harming the student. What is wrong with people????? This poor child is living in fear and the meal he is receiving at school is probably the only meal he gets all day. This father needs only to complete a simple form and his child will be eligible to receive free meals for the remainder of the school year. Stubborn, uncaring, selfish, prideful, sorry excuse for a parent!!! This story breaks my heart and it’s one I hear pretty much on a weekly basis.

Another, more common, negative aspect of my job is having to communicate with the parents. I would say that a good percentage of them are kind and appreciative, but the rest of them I could really do without. I don’t like being yelled at and I tend to take things personally. When a single mom is yelling at me at the top of her lungs because I didn’t approve her (in other words, she didn’t qualify) and her kid will now starve because of me, I really take that to heart. A regular-priced meal is $2.00-$2.25 depending on if it’s an elementary or secondary school and it does add up when you have several kids in school…trust me! I do understand that if you are struggling a student’s school meal cost could seem overwhelming.  But for those who are denied, inevitably I am always blamed as if I just randomly assigned them a category without any regard to the Federal Guidelines JUST because I wanted to be mean and cruel. In the beginning it was hard for me not to get defensive and argue back with them. Now I take a deep breath and remember that I too was there not that many years ago and I know when you are struggling financially the stress can cause you to be short-tempered.

I feel for these families that are in a difficult spot right now. But sometimes their stubbornness prevents their kids from eating at all. I once had a mom walk into my office and hand me an application. She asked if I would look it over and let her know if her children qualified. I calculated her income and informed her that her children qualified for reduced-price meals so it would be .30 cents for breakfast and .40 cents for lunch…a significant savings. Her eyes instantly filled up with tears, which I assumed to be tears of gratitude. Instead, she yanked the application out of my hand and said, “Well just forget it then!” Very confused, I asked her what she meant. She said she absolutely did not have ANY extra money after she paid her mortgage, her cell phone, her car, and all her other expenses and asked me why I wouldn’t take her expenses into consideration. Then she looked me square in the eye and asked me, “HOW do you expect me to feed my kids?” What I wanted to say, I couldn’t. I wanted to tell her to sell her house and move into a more affordable apartment, sell the expensive car and purchase something more reasonable, get rid of the cell phones, get a higher paying job, get your lazy husband who refuses to work to just get ANY job…do whatever it takes to make sure your kids eat! I begged her to allow me to process the application anyway. I told her that if she would let me put the kids on reduced meals then at least they could eat every now and then when she manages to find .80 cents…but she wouldn’t let me. Too stubborn, too prideful, too selfish to accept reduced meals but acted like she was OWED free meals.

Then we have the worst of the worst. The families that drive Ford Tahoe’s and  live in 3500 sq. foot homes who sashay into my office wearing their 2 ct. diamond earrings and carrying their Louis Vuitton purses. Those are the ones who hand me an application that claim they make $300/w, or they provide some bogus Food Stamp number, all the while showing no signs of guilt or embarrassment as they wait impatiently for me to process it. Another con they’re pulling off is that they’ll add 4 or 5 additional phony house members to their application so even if I do verify their income, it won’t matter because I’m forced to calculate it based on a family size of 13! It’s a pitiful abuse of a government program. It aggravates me. It’s almost as bad as those who refuse to work at all and just expect the government to provide for them and their children.

The more I think about it, the madder I get. Reed and I had a rough couple of years when we were first married. Reed went on interview after interview only to hear each time that same, lame “overqualified” excuse. We could have used food stamps or other forms of assistance but we didn’t, although we did receive help from my father. We found a way to provide for our family without asking our neighbors to foot the bill on April 15^th. I want to tell so many of these families to GET A JOB! Take care of your own kids, and stop blaming me that they are hungry!! Instead, I am forced to give them a sympathetic smile as I place a big, red, “Approved” stamp on their application.

The programs such as the one I manage at our school district of 26,000+ students is set up to help those who could not possibly feed their children at this point in their lives. It’s designed to ensure the good nutrition of these children, not to give parents extra money to spend on their Disney vacation. And there are families that are on the program year after year after year. And please don’t think I’m looking down upon the needy. It’s quite the opposite. I am proud that my job helps people in need. I love to see the look of relief on the faces of the parents when I tell them they no longer have to worry about paying for their children’s lunch or breakfast. But I can’t STAND the liars, the lazy don’t-wanna-work, or “Hey if I can get away with it, why not?” parents that abuse the system. It’s pathetic.

End vent.