Your Tax Dollars at Work

This morning, a nicely dressed young couple entered the store pushing a nicely dressed baby in a very nice stroller. They spent a few minutes browsing the contents of the cosmetics aisle, where the young woman found a tube of mascara that was to her liking. At the register, she happily informed me that they were going to have their family pictures done at a studio that I am quite familiar with but do not frequent due to the photographer’s prices being significantly out of my budget.

Unfortunately, the young woman said, she had forgotten her mascara and, now she needed to purchase some because her eyelashes just do not stand out without mascara, a predicament with which I am, sadly, personally familiar.

Then, she handed me a Colorado Quest Card and told me to charge the purchase against it.

The Colorado Quest Card, for those of you unfamiliar, is a card issued to the indigent for purchases of food; electronic food stamps, if you will.

I declined to accept the card and the young lady was most put out with me. She argued the point for several minutes until I casually tossed out the words benefit fraud and she and the young man hustled out of the store in a hurry.

And, I realized that, this is what is wrong with our society today; people bent on taking advantage of services they don’t deserve.

Unless she planned to eat that tube of mascara in which case, my bad.