One thing you notice, working at a grocery store, is the number of people in your area who are eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also called SNAP, and previously called the Food Stamp Program, but referred to more colloquially as EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer). 

It’s a government-issued card that helps people in tight financial situations to pay for groceries. Presumably, if you saw someone using the card, you could venture a guess at how much they earn. You need to have a net income of less than $1,390 to be elligible. 

Sometimes if I’m talking to a customer when they pull out a SNAP card I’ll flick my eyes away because I don’t want them to feel self-conscious. Money’s a touchy subject and I notice that even among my colleagues, all of whom earn the same amount of money per hour give or take two dollars, nobody seems all that comfortable talking about it. One of my colleagues goes to the front of the store periodically to put her face against the glass, checks on something, then goes back to whatever she was doing. The other day we were working together at the register and I asked her why she does that. 

She said, “I’m checking to see if anyone’s messed with my bike.”

“It’s parked up front there?”

She rolls her eyes. “I know.”

(The bike-racks outside are notoriously easy-pickins for thieves.)

“Why don’t you wheel it into the break room and park it with everyone else’s?”

She dropped her shoulders and put her head back and laughed in a self-conscious way and said, “Yeah right. Roll my bike in there and have everyone say, ‘Wow, look at her janky little bike.’”

“Aren’t…?” I hesitated because it seemed indiscreet and it implicated her and me and everyone else, “aren’t we…all…poor, though? Like don’t we all…?”

Because the other thing I’ve noticed is that almost all of my colleagues shop with a SNAP card. That I myself am probably eligible for a SNAP card if I crunch the numbers. It’s a bummer and it’s frustrating to see that we’re all in this same urgent situation without ever talking about it—but it’s also a bit of a relief to learn, as someone who’s chronically broke and bad with money and often embarrassed by his circumstances, that my own situation with money is…more than common. 

The store sees a pop in foot traffic between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. and then it drops off until 6. This is the after-school crowd. Parents with their kids. It’s a 70-minute stretch in which maybe one in five people pay with a SNAP card.

But the store does half of its business between 6 p.m. and close. This is when people show up in work clothes, without their kids. They’ll pick up enough groceries to last one or two nights and when the bill comes out to $18 they say, “OK,” and they fan out their wallet, “I’m gonan pay $12 with a debit card and the rest in cash.” They’re nervous when the transaction goes through. Ask me to double and triple check that I’m not charging more than $12 to the card. Sometimes they ask me to twist the monitor around so they can make sure. “Sorry to bother,” usually pretty humble about it, “but just…if this thing overdrafts…”

I tell them we can refund the money to their card if that happens and they say yeah, but in a tired way, like they’ve been this route before, “But then the money won’t get back to my account for two or three days.” 

And so we proceed slowly. 

Miami Beach is a very flashy place and it’s easy to think that everyone has more money than you do. The biggest business out here is hospitality. Hotels and motels and cafes and restaurants and bars. Fully staffed, bright and flashy, business is always booming. Customers flooding out onto sidewalk tables. Designer sunglasses. The dishes are small and photogenic and come out six or nine at a time. 

There seem to be more people living this way than not. 

What’s worth remembering is that yes these trendy-seeming restaurants are everywhere, and seem to suggest something about the financial well-being of the people who live in this area, but they are all staffed with minimum-wage workers, for the most part, or people earning $16, $18, $20 an hour—which isn’t bad money, necessarily, but it does mean that if you work full-time at one of these places, meaning you surrender about a third of your waking life to their service, you will still earn juuust enough money to pay rent, utilities, car payments, phone payments…

And maybe, with a little assistance, some groceries.