A Great Whatever (blog story) 19

     Rich people who say they were happier when they were poor are idiots and liars. Nothing compares to the stress of wondering whether or not you can afford a two dollar gas station hot dog.
     Every day you are tasked with picking up the lunches for your co-workers. It takes an hour or so to gather their twelve dollar cobb salads and thirteen dollar lobster rolls and fourteen dollar Peking duck lunch specials. You always managed to get something for yourself along the way. Not anymore. It isn’t in your budget.
     Most revolutions arise from hunger. The smartest thing any government can do is to make sure that, if they do nothing else, they keep their citizens well feed. Driving in your car, filled with to-go boxes, listening to your stomach growl, you begin to understand Karl Marx. You lament a world so awash in consumerism and greed. You long for a world where people only took what they needed and made sure no one went without. You imagine yourself as Che’ Mark, with a little moustache and a Spanish accent.
     Of course, communism is stupid. You are a part of the capitalist world. Hell, you went to school and majored in capitalism. It’s not the damn world’s fault you’re hungry. Then again, it doesn’t help that they treat you like shit at the office. You could afford grilled tuna steak for lunch if they paid you a living wage.
     On the way back you stop at a liquor store and buy a cheap bottle of vodka and some breath mints. In the parking lot you strategically steal a bite from each meal and wash it down with New Jersey’s version of Russia’s finest. At the office nobody notices that their lunches have been tampered with. You go to your desk, which you aren’t supposed to sit at, take out your laptop and log on to Facebook. No one bothers you the rest of the day. Hooray for the little guy.