Today I had the delight of visiting my local welfare office. You hear a lot about those places, but it isn’t like what you think. Or maybe it is. I won’t pretend to know what you think. I guess I know two opinions folks have on the welfare office although people probably have others as well. One is it’s a sad place where useless/dangerous people who have too many kids go, to get free stuff. The other is it’s a sad place where sad people go who have not had the privileges the rest of us have had, to be demeaned while they get free stuff for their multitudinous children.
Now, I guess I am finally one of the privileged. I certainly am solid middle class at this point in my life. However, most things in my life are qualified. For instance, I have a graduate degree but it’s from a state school. I’m a homeowner who only got there the old fashioned way (people died). Maybe I can’t believe I had the luck to be solid middle class so I’m trying to tear it down. Don’t know….
Anyway, I do think I have a unique vantage point. When I was in high school we donated our couch that we had been using every day, because someone gave us a newer one, and when Goodwill came by, they wouldn’t take it because it was too fucked up. In years prior, I didn’t have a winter coat and it was pretty cold where I lived. One of my best friends lived behind the impound lot in a trailer with six siblings. Man we had some good times breaking into those cars. Around this same time, I took my first overnight train ride, on the Orient Express from Venice to Paris. I guess my point is I’ve pretty much seen both sides of things and I know enough to know that what most folks think about class issues is usually simultaneously right and wrong.
Let me interject one moment to say that I’m not going to say why I was at the welfare office but I will say that I was referred to them to check into a situation. It was my intention to be honest and see if they could help me. I actually did tell the person who interviewed me that I considered myself middle class, so I wasn’t trying to scam.
When I walk in, there is a metal detector. I am asked to empty my pockets into a dirty, plastic bin. The security guard goes through my purse. I walk into the main room where there is a bank of windows behind bulletproof glass facing a bunch of plastic chairs all stuck together, DMV style. It looks like a boring George Tooker painting. If you don't know his paintings go google right now. I'll wait for you.
There are two armed guards giving everyone the stinkeye. There is a small T.V. area where kids can go hang. The kid's T.V. is behind bulletproof glass. You know how grumpy those welfare kids get when they run out of those big cheese blocks. They don't get bratty, they get shooty. In spite of all this security, no one looks particularly scary. It’s mostly moms and old people in a rainbow of colors. I’m not the only white person there.
I wait in the customer service line, explain my sitch, and am sent to another line. I explain my sitch again, the woman asks me to fill out a form, which I do. She gets irked because I didn’t bring my social security card. I apologize and tell her that I wasn’t told to by the person that referred me. She is speaking through one of those mics and keeps not speaking directly into it so I keep asking her to repeat everything. She is getting increasingly annoyed. Then she turns off her mic ( I can still hear her but it’s muffled) and starts giving her co-worker the business. “When we all work together thing go smooth, when you send everyone to me, it doesn’t go smooth”. Stuff like that. The co-workers are staring blankly at her. This makes me feel better because I know her annoyance is generalized. It’s not personal. When we finish our business, I smile and say “thank you”. She seems to appreciate it.
I wait in the rows of sticky chairs and read my book. Kids run around me laughing and playing. It takes about half an hour for them to call my name. I go though a door into a labyrinth of blank cubicles for my interview. The woman I speak to is thorough, professional, even kind. She explains how the system works. It’s pretty complicated and confusing. We schedule another appointment in order to give me time to gather information.
When my dad came to America he got off the boat in New York. He was given fifty dollars by a Jewish charity because he came over here with a bunch of people who had been in concentration camps. He tried to explain to the charity that he wasn't Jewish and hadn't been in those camps. just a regular prison camp. They told him to keep it anyway. When he was finally offered a job in California he had doubts about moving to such a far off place. The woman who interviewed him for the job took him to the window and showed him a homeless man people were stepping over, in the street. She told him that in America, you had to make the most of your opportunities because no one including the government had your back. He took the job.
It wasn’t terrible advice. It’s mostly true that if you have to rely on the government you are in a pretty bad place. They will barely keep you alive. The barest bare minimum. But navigating the system wasn’t as bad as you would think either. From what I saw, there were everyday people (maybe with more neck tattoos than usual) being ushered through a regimented process with dignity and kindness.
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