I hate food stamps.

Today we are going to change gears just a little bit and talk about food stamps, more currently known as EBT or electronic benefit transfer. Low-income individuals are deposited cash money or food money into an account every month. Publix accepts these EBT cards, which allow users to buy any type of food in the store, excluding hot items like the fried chicken for example. My initial complaint is that these dumb cards never swipe, or our credit/debit card machines do not read them. The cards are very poorly made and the tiniest scratch will deactivate it. They will look brand new but the customer will not even attempt to slide it and will hand it to me saying, “It don’t swipe.” This makes my job harder, I then have to manually enter the card in, trace the card number on a carbon copy paper and enter a specific receipt into the machine. Now, that isn’t that big of a deal, I can handle it. What drives me nuts is the way people use this money given to them. They will come in and buy Publix subs chips and candy bars for them as well as their five other friends. They buy crap, junk food instead of using that money given to them by the government to get their essential grocery needs. This, might I add is only the situation from my experience in Tallahassee, it was not this bad at my store at home. By now I can just tell by the groceries on the conveyer belt, the customer will be using food stamps. It is ridiculous and frustrates me how much people take advantage of what the government is doing to try to help.