Having worked at a dime over minimum wage, Maria Jones appreciates the part-time wages from Walmart. She’s struggled, but a new, FREE recipe handed down from the notoriously progressive management has solved almost all her problems.
She’s kept at 24-hours a week so she isn’t entitled to any healthcare, but that was part of the old bullshit, with the new Trumpian bullshit being so much better.
“I don’t get healthcare, sure,” said Jones, as her sickly child slowly expired on her lap, in accordance with God’s Will.
“I was worried that working two jobs wasn’t enough for me, but I guess it is.”
Maria works 60-hours a week at two different jobs. Her first pays her $164/week, while her second pays $261.
The first is from a Fortune 500 company, which only has to pay medical if she works over 25-hours, which they are desperately careful she never reaches, and the second works her 36-hours at minimum wage, but since they don’t have enough employees, they’re exempt.
Maria earns $437 per week for her shameful 61-hours, so she doesn’t qualify for low income healthcare subsidies.
Her coughing daughter was about to die, but at age 15, she was arrested in a prostitution sting, which allowed her to be treated for he ailments, and also tried as an adult. She can’t buy a lottery ticket or sign a contract, but she’s no longer dying medically, only psychologically, since she’s now wrapped up in the for-profit juvenile detention system.
We’d like to make jokes after this point, but these situations are equally real and tragic.
“We used to eat ends-meat about once a week. We don’t have that any more,” said Maria, choking back tears.