When your manager at the cafe says, “hey do you wanna take home the muffins?” At the end of the day makes you cry
I know this. Stolen eggs and ramen on sale to keep me alive while I worked full time with full time school. Consistently sleep deprived from trying to sustain my life while I earned an education.
I remember someone didn't want their pork rinds and gave me the bag. Those in my ramen that night made me cry.
I'm right there with you, although I should say I'm kinda still there in that place. I'm very fortunate to work in a place that leaves out food in the break room. Its always just small granola bars and a loaf of bread with a jar of peanutbutter and jelly.
You bet your sweet ass that as soon as nobody was looking I'd stuff a handful of bars into my pockets and make two sandwiches and scarf them down before somebody walked in.
This is super gross...but I once worked as a busser in a restaurant and would eat the untouched leftovers that people would leave behind. Yea, I risked a lot by doing that, but when somebody orders 20 hot wings but only eats 5 of them...and the rest are still smoking hot on that plate that is about to head into the trash can...yea dude I was hungry.
Man I don't blame you at all. When it comes down to it... a man's gotta eat. The first time hunger was a real issue was when life became real.
I was luck and I worked at a pizza place that sold individual slice's. When they expired, I would save them up and throughout the day and take them home. I literally lived off pizza for a solid year, and then I still used the junk slices to supplement meals. Free pizza helped me escape poverty.
I'm lucky, I started working in restaurants at 14, I was never not working in a kitchen until I switched careers (got a degree later in life after a serious medical incident). I would almost never buy food and when I did I knew how to cook the things very few would touch (you could get a pound of chicken livers for about 30 cents from local market, pork bones around a dollar, etc..) being able to cook anything really kept my food budget to near nothing (it's still pretty low, I know where to get cheap produce and fish/meat and don't buy prepackaged or convenient food).
I think I realized I wasn't poor anymore was when I was able to walk into a legit new clothing store and buy a new dress shirt for work (I had the same 2 dress shirt bought at the salvo $3 a piece that I owner for 16 years, mostly for funerals, job interviews, and catering jobs). It was only like $12 (on sale) but buying a legit shirt that fits right (for the job I started weeks prior) was a big step.
My GF tries to get my to spend money on stuff now, I'm not ultra frugal but there's still a creepy "what the fuck am I doing, this is wrong" panic I get when we go out to dinner.