I don’t know this guy, I just follow him on Twitter, but I’ll encourage you, if you’re on Twitter, maybe go and hit that retweet on these too – folks there need this advice as much as we do here.
Actually, that was also another decent example of people trying to make you feel like shit for needing any help.
Never mind that I did have other trouble reliably going shopping, and really was running up against some harassment. It all got cast as some individual mental health problem that I just needed to toughen up and get over–a.k.a. “Stop Being So Ridiculous (Yet Again)!” and “If You Would Handle Situations Properly, There Wouldn’t Even Be Any Problem!”
Meanwhile, that really was not causing extra trouble for anyone. She was doing the exact same shopping as usual–and at that point my parents usually had their own food stamps, thanks to both being disabled and often unable to work. It was still apparently necessary to snark and act like that about it whenever she was having a bad day and needed somebody to unload some of that on.
(That also occurred to me as an unfortunately good example of some of the reasons why I still hesitate to say anything when I am having trouble or need even relatively simple/routine help. Especially if it could be interpreted as Clatterbane Just Being Inconveniently Ridiculous.
And too relevant an example, given some of the reasons I haven’t been getting out much lately. Which also involve often not having the spoons to also deal with actual bad behavior from complete fucking strangers out in public when I am already struggling. I know my partner is unlikely to pull that shit, but it still makes me nervous just thinking about it. Not to mention needing to ask anybody to take up more slack.)
For that matter, I’m pretty sure I was regularly committing some of that Dread Food Stamp Fraud, back when they were way more obtrusive Monopoly money-looking physical coupons.
I would usually just give my mom the huge roughly $25/month worth that I became eligible for once I got on SSI. Largely because of anxiety.
I was having a rough enough time without also devoting spoons I didn’t have to dealing with the high likelihood of shittiness out of cashiers and/or other customers as soon as you pulled them out. She was more up to it. (And probably didn’t face the exact same types of judgy bullshit, not being an apparently healthy-looking person in their 20s.)
Anyway, I had other problems getting out shopping. And shopping assistance is allowed for disabled adults. What likely pushed it over into technical “fraud” was that I just handed that big $25 over for her to use as she saw fit. That food was not bought/prepared separately from the rest of the household supplies.
Just reminded of that, as another example of (fairly common) “fraud” that’s really not hurting anybody. And is not what most people will think of, at all.
I know for a fact I’ve told this story on here before but I’ll never get over the time when I was working retail and I was cashing out some lady so I asked “cash, debit or credit how are you paying, ma’am?” And she said “that’s none of your business.” And demanded to speak to my manager about my invasive question
So when I was working as a 35-year-old cashier in 2005 (to supplement my extremely part-time job as office manager at a tech start-up in order to justify paying a babysitter) part of my training included how to be kind to people paying with food stamps. Food stamps had only just been renamed SNAP, and food stamp debit cards had just been issued.
We asked “Cash, check, or card?” And didn’t look to see what they used (the computerized register showed it only on the cashier’s side).
And just in case they had forgotten to separate SNAP-eligible food from ineligible household necessities, we had a script for that too. We would already have made sure to ring up food first, so that we didn’t have to void out the whole order and start again. For the rest of the line, we’d smile sweetly and say, “I’m so sorry, computer issue, the supervisor will open another line when she comes to fix it.”
And only the supervisor, the customer, and the cashier would ever know about the food stamps, because all the other customers would be shuffled off to another line.
Look, this is a bit embarrassing, but I’m afraid that I’m a fully-paid-up honest-to-goodness barmitzvahed-and-circumcised Jew myself. And while I would, of course, like sympathisers and money, I most certainly do not want yours.
Also, it’s spelled ‘voluntary’.
Wow.
Imagine thinking something like this How repulsive How awful to have to read it. Much better and calmer response than I would have had.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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