“I haven’t had it worse than anyone else, and actually, that’s kind of the point. This is just what life is for roughly a third of the country.” In her introduction to Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (published in October from GP Putnam’s Sons), author Linda Tirado expands on the online essay that went viral, in which she tried to answer an anonymous poster’s question about why poor people make “self-destructive” decisions. Her arguments are funny and incisive, often summarizing big ideas into a single perfect sentence (“I have trouble understanding why taking a few grand a year in food stamps is somehow magically different than taking trillions as a bailout.”), and prodding readers to see the bigger picture about poverty. Many of those “bad” decisions represent the best option available at the time for people with limited resources. I emailed Tirado some questions about life before and after the book, dental drama and the daily grind that is life between paychecks.
The Progressive Populist: Hand to Mouth has its roots in an essay you wrote online that went viral, in answer to a question about “why poor people make such bad decisions.” What were you feeling when you wrote that initial reply?
Linda Tirado: That particular day I’d been due home at a reasonable hour, and I had a list of things to get done. Of course I wound up having to stay at work for hours, and by the time I got home, I was reflecting on the fact that you can’t vacuum the floors when everyone’s asleep. I felt like I was failing personally, and I was really angry about that. It’s pretty much the default state of any service worker, actually. Not quite ever able to get on top of everything.
TPP: How has it been dealing with the media about the initial post and now the book?
LT: I think the word we’re looking for here is surreal, or possibly unbelievable. I’m just some asshole from the Internet, and there is no rhyme or reason to going viral. Nobody emails you a week in advance and warns you to sleep up. People forget that you still have a job to go to. Interestingly, people seemed to forget that just because you are being discussed publicly, it doesn’t mean that you’re equipped for national attention. My journal from that month is a frightened mess of a place. The media and Internet from that month are just a blur; I remember sitting in a chair answering email and going to work and answering more comments and going to work.
The things I remember clearly are really cool for the most part. Unexpected people reached out to give me support. A guy named Zak Smith, who’s an artist, DMed [direct-messaged] me on Twitter one day when I was completely overwhelmed. He just talked with me, told me I was doing fine, stayed online for six hours being soothing. A comedian basically reached out because he came up from the working class too to say, “Everything’s cool, don’t do hookers and blow for a decade.” A writer I admire told me to trust my own judgment more. I remember the support, I suppose, because it all meant the world to me.
The book media is a blast! A book is an understandable reason why someone would want to talk to me, so it’s way less scary. Plus now I get to sleep, too. I highly recommend sleep before national media.
TPP: There are far too many misconceptions about the working poor in this country, but if you had the power to correct or clarify just one, which do you see as the most important?
LT: Poor people are poor because they lack money. They aren’t poor because they’re stupid or lazy or malevolent or immoral. They just don’t have a great job. People seem to have this notion that hard work and moral Puritanism are rewarded in America. They’re not. Savvy and a certain ruthlessness are rewarded, but the days of a strong arm and a pair of bootstraps being enough to make you stable are over. Over and over, I see people saying “just don’t be so lazy,” as though the majority of people getting food stamps aren’t working, or as though all you have to do is knock on a few doors and you are guaranteed to find decent work. Dudes: We’re working three s**t jobs. That’s the opposite of lazy. Do you even know what words mean?
TPP: Without “outing” your employers, can you list the jobs you held that are described in “Hand to Mouth”? I was occasionally confused, because while it’s clear that you waited tables and tended bar, there were some managerial positions in there as well.
LT: I can’t give you more details about which jobs I was talking about when, but here is a partial list of Things I Have Done for Money: bartender, server, cook, restaurant manager, retail manager, club manager, cashier, grassroots organizer, writer, secretary, home health aide, child-care worker, cocktail waitress, day laborer, farm worker, and personal assistant.
My strategy is thusly: Find a job. Keep the job for as long as you can. Take the promotion if it’s offered to you. Keep that job as long as you can. Repeat, pay rent. I’ve never really had the luxury of a real career before, it’s all been reactive and need-based. I make a good jack of all trades.
TPP: A lot of what you describe in the book is firsthand knowledge to me, especially the crap sandwich of being treated poorly by retail management and worse by the same store’s customers, then criticized for being insufficiently cheerful. Did getting to write about it feel cathartic at all, or did it just bring up how awful that feels?
LT: Little of both. To write, at least the way everyone seems to prefer, I have to really kind of absorb the feelings I’m trying to describe. But this time, when I thought about how screwed I’d been in this situation or that, I didn’t feel powerless. I was remembering things so that I could maybe help fix them, was pouring out all the moral high ground I’ve ever had. And I’m not a saint, so I don’t get the high ground in all cases. I enjoy the hell out of it when I have it.
Catharsis is a good word for it. I think the only downside was that I had to be super-careful to obscure all identifying details. I spent about five minutes (okay, hours) fantasizing about what would happen if I just told the stories as they happened, in the right order and with names attached. That would have been pure catharsis, but it would also have been very derailing to the larger message, which is that we are treated this way because that’s the way we’ve set up our workforce. Blaming an individual company or manager for that is like blaming an individual worker for not having a better job.
TPP: What was the first job you ever had? How old were you when you started?
LT: When I was 14, I took two summer jobs. Both food service. One was as a counter worker in a mom-and-pop fast food joint, and one was as a concessions worker at the Shakespeare Festival in my hometown. At those jobs, I learned: your paycheck is smaller than you think it will be. Songs of the summer are called that for a reason. The really cool adults smoke cloves. Day-Glo pink is a super-flattering color on any girl. The height of sophisticated luxury is a mango smoothie and Little Caesars breadsticks eaten on the lawn in the dusk with a boy who is also fourteen but thinks you are sixteen.
I have unlearned some of the lessons, that’s what I’m saying. But I really enjoyed having something to do and a place to go where my parents weren’t allowed.
TPP: What are you doing for work now? Has this book changed your prospects in a meaningful way?
LT: I’m starting down a life (path) in which people are going to pay me to think about things, which is sort of like watching a unicorn walk down the street and have everyone act like it’s normal. These days I write, and I think of ways I might be able to help more. Then I do them if they’re possible. We lack a real understanding of what it means to have a service economy. My observations were certainly personal, but my experiences are shared by millions. My work life now consists mainly of broadcasting that as widely as I can; there are millions of people who deserve a seat at the table, because poor does not mean unaware.
TPP: One thing you explain better than I’ve seen anyone do previously is how costly it is to be poor; it’s virtually impossible to save when every penny is needed to simply keep yourself upright and traveling to and from work. Roughly a third of us are in this leaky canoe, but for those who aren’t it’s like we’re speaking a foreign language. How can we best make this argument while respecting that lots of people truly don’t “get it” and so don’t penalize them for it?
LT: I think we start talking. We challenge assumptions. We demand the respect we have earned. We keep talking about what it’s like, how impossible it is, how silly this whole economy has made things. People are people, and everyone has biases. The task is to correct them, really. We can just refuse to look down anymore - it’s not like the giant wheels of business and industry wouldn’t come to a screeching halt if the service workers of America went Galt, to borrow a phrase from my favorite Social Security recipient [Ayn Rand]. We’re all in this together, and it’s damn well time we remembered that.
TPP: As someone who has also had her lack of access to dentistry twisted into an accusation of “meth mouth,” I’m wondering how your teeth are, and if getting this book published offers you any chance at getting some pain relief (Tirado had severe injuries to her jaw and teeth as a result of a car accident).
LT: Yes! I’ll be getting the surgery I need this fall. It’s amazing. I’m sorry to hear you have to deal with that stuff too. F*** those people. It always amazes me that people can say stuff like that. I want to ask them where they learned manners, and if they also point at people who have burn scars and tell them to use moisturizer or something.
TPP: Finally, thanks so much for taking the time for these questions, and just let readers know how you and your family are doing right now, and what’s next for you?
LT: Everyone is fine! My oldest is in preschool, my youngest is starting to talk. There’s a lot of Peppa Pig. As far as my professional life, I’m not sure what comes next. I’m writing more, and looking at my options. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about viral news and the place of new media. Mostly, I’m trying to adjust. It’s a lot to adjust to. But hot damn, the pillows are nice. That part’s been easy to get used to. A few projects up my sleeve: I’ve started a website, www.bootstrapindustries.com. I am convinced that we have to fight together or fail separately, and the easiest way for me to make the case that everything I described is reality for a lot of people is to have them tell their stories too.
And keep an eye on my Twitter, @killermartinis, for updates on other projects.
Heather Seggel is a freelance writer. Email hlsegg@hotmail.com. See Tirado’s original essay that went viral at <http://huff.to/1gNmXOu>.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015
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