I’ll tell you this much: I was grateful to have been hired by the Angelika Film Center (it was the first place I applied after I lost my previous job and my savings were pretty much laughable at that point), but it’s not the best place in the world to work if you’re 25 and enjoy living above the poverty line. My hours weren’t full-time (I don’t think anyone pulled a full 40 hours, come to think of it), and when they had too many people in for a shift they’d almost always send me home. Granted, I’d almost always volunteer to be the one to get sent home on account of hating to be at work, but my paychecks weren’t amounting to much. Another period of my life where I was well-acquainted with soup and ramen noodles.

Now: Angelika employees were allowed to eat certain foods on their breaks or whenever the one manager nobody liked wasn’t around, so the option was before me to save a couple bucks a day by enjoying the free food in front of me. Except that free food amounted to soda, the puffed Styrofoam that passes for movie theater popcorn, occasionally nachos with cheese that’s basically time-release diarrhea, and assorted condiments (I could've made soup out of water, ketchup, mustard, jalapenos and popcorn salt but that would’ve taken some initiative and I certainly wasn’t there every day to work). If I was going to take the plunge into that sick sad world once a day just to stretch a dime I would’ve ended up with a tapeworm that had diabetes. For the most part I’d have some soda and try to keep it at that.

But that didn’t work every day. Some days you’re running late and you don’t have time to eat before work. Some days you’re forced to sacrifice common sense and gastrointestinal stability in the name of something, anything to tide you over until you can eat real food. Some days you just say “fuck it” and eat some nachos because nachos are delicious even when the first thing they make you think of is shitting. Some days you just want someone to please kill you.

Shame

Some days the only things keeping you from emptying the cash register and driving to the fanciest goddamn steakhouse in Houston are knowing that you’re going to have to take a violent dook in fifteen minutes because you just ate some nachos, and the fact that your boss is standing right next to you.