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Originally Posted by dissention
Have you ever read "Nickel and Dimed"It's shocking on so many levels that people out there work their asses off, even holding two or three jobs, and have to live out of their ****ing cars because the money they make is not enough to support them in terms of housing, utility bills, and food.
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I have read it. I am really glad she wrote that book, and that it has done so well. I worked as a waitress for 14 years (started in college) , and I have even cleaned houses to get by, so her descriptions of her experience were very vivid for me. Fortunately, I did not have a child to raise, and managed to move out of the service sector. I know it is hard for many people to imagine what it would be like to work like crazy, and still not make it.
story
Last year I took my car in for repairs, and decied to take the bus with my son into town. I thought it would be fun - we'd go shopping. We got on the bus, and the driver told me I would have to take my son out of the stroller, and fold it down. So there we were: a wiggling toddler, two bags of groceries (from under the stroller) and a mom trying to collapse the stroller, hold the kid, pay the driver, and get it all to the back of the bus. I had never thought of how difficult it would be for a mother to ride a bus with her child. Never considered it. Mothers do this with multiple children, and they take their kids to day care, and they do it every day. I have empathy for them now, but I didn't before...And yet I still have done anything to help change things.
How do we encourage empathy and understanding, and then enable people to act when they see circumstances that need to change?