Loaves and Fishes and Lots of Cases Today

Working at DSS is hard. It isn't hard like it would be if I were digging ditches or working on a machine in a manufacturing plant. You go home tired from those jobs because you've been physically active for 8 or 12 straight hours and you're just physically exhausted. Working at DSS is different. You physically really don't do much of anything all day long except punch keys and talk to people.

But you go home just as tired.

You see how hard life really is for a lot of different people. Whether it's the ones who have been receiving all of their lives and don't see any way out of it. Or whether they are brand new to the system because they just lost their jobs and never thought they would be sitting in front of you applying for Food Stamps. They are different from each other, but it's hard either way because you see the hopelessness in one and the fear in the other.

But it's my job to help them.

I don't know how good I am at it. There are days when I resent them and days when I resent the job itself because it just never ends. One interview is replaced by another interview. And for every case I process, it seems like three or four more end up on my desk within the hour. But there are moments.

A homeless guy came into the agency today. He didn't just need stamps. It was obvious that he really needed food and needed it pretty quickly. It takes time to do a food referral and to call the local food banks and soup kitchens to see if anyone has an opening. And homeless people are harder referrals because they don't have anywhere to cook or to store food, which means the food bank has to prepare a special package for them.

But actually, in the midst of all of the keystroking and paper pushing and eligibility interviewing, the homeless guys are the one part of the job I really don't mind because it's tangible. It's REAL. I know the money is real and I know inside that everyone I approve needs it. (At least I hope they do, because the ones who cheat at Food Stamps are stealing from the weakest and most vulnerable among us). But it's different when you actually go back to the food bank and get a bag of food and hand it to someone. It's not the same as generating system mail for them telling them how much their benefit allotment will be.

So at that moment, I smiled at the homeless guy because he knew he would eat tonight and he was grateful for nothing more than that. And then I went back to the interviewing and keystroking because during the time I took to refer him and get him his bag of food, two more people were assigned to me and they needed food too.

Like I said, when your job is making sure people have food, it's never easy because there is never an end to the people who need it.

But it does occasionally make you feel good.