Hand Made In The USA

 
  
  If you think about it not many people make anything any more. They might make their own food, like lunch for work or dinner for when guests come over, but ordinary every day things are always bought from large department stores. Not many people knit their own socks, crochet their own blankets, sew their own pillow cases, or weave their own wash cloths. The idea of being able to take care of oneself and others seems to be such a foreign idea in today's culture.

  These concepts are not completely unheard of in the Amish and Prepper communities, but they have a religious purpose for their preferred lifestyle. The average American cannot do for themselves, and if there was ever a meat shortage how quickly so  many of them would be in support of gun ownership and hunting. It's strange to think about how obsessed we are with fashion, but only a select few can actually make a sweater with two needles and some yarn. We have become such a lazy society that no even tries to learn any more, except for then directions to the nearest Walmart. 

  Most consumers have grown accustomed to the cheap mass produced quality that foreign countries offer, yet at the same time craft supplies are not cheap and they do not sell manufacturer quality supplies to the general public (unless you buy it in $500 lots). To quote Rebecca Alidre Holmes-Anderson, "Most anyone would rather pay $20 at a big box store for a sweater than what it would cost to make it. It’s society’s way of thinking that ‘DIY’ is cheaper than buying the product, and often that’s the case, but with most needle crafts, it’s not.” It usually costs $20 for the yarn alone to make an adult sized sweater, not including labor.

  This supply and demand has made so many of us reject the idea that we can take the same tools and supplies to make the same things ourselves for the same price and we can't. Because China is cheaper and the US believes in minimum wage, we no longer try as hard to make things for ourselves. Of course a sweater is cheaper if it only cost a company in China 3 cents an hour to make plus $1.50 in yarn, and $3 in shipping costs to the United States. 

  The only way I can make a sweater as cheap as that is by going to yard sales and thrift shops, and buying already made sweaters that I will recycle the yarn from. I know of a store where I can buy out of season sweaters for 50 cents, then turn them into things I need, like socks, scarves, and wash clothes. There is a will with a way. 

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Three Dollars For Three Minutes

 

  During WWII in Hawaii, on Pearl Street prostitutes worked in a set of rooms that went in a circle called the bull pen, in these rooms they would entertain a soldier for three minutes then move on to the next room. This is where the expression $3 for 3 minutes came from. This also helped to cement the term a 'working girl', because this was no ordinary 8 hour shift.
   Very often I will work the morning shift at my part time restaurant job, and most of the customers are elderly and female. No matter how much you bust your butt making everything perfect during their two hour visit they will only tip you three dollars, and they are senile enough to believe they have only been there for three minutes. Performing these tasks day after day really makes prostitution look like an equal opportunity with the same job description, except you can be self employed and work from home, unlike the restaurant business.
  Don't get me wrong, not everyday is a bad day, but every time I see those three one-dollar bills sitting on the table or that amount written on the credit card receipt, all I can think of is Pearl Street prostitution as I watch the old ladies hobble out the door. I am also very sure that they were protected enough in their youth and kept so busy with children all their lives that they never got around to learning more about history or where the expression $3 for 3 minutes came from. So now in their ancient age and blindness to all things (like inflation, minimum wage, and cost of living), they revert back to what they think was a good tip when they were younger.....like in 1960.
   Don't get me wrong, I like talking with old people and making others happy, but my boss does not like it when I try to only spend three minutes with each table so that I can still pay my bills. It's is such a regular expectation for me to only be given the value of $3 that I have considered doing what other servers have already done...such as screening a table before taking it. There are two servers who I work with who do not wait on people who appear to be over the age of 45, and who do not dress as if they did not buy their clothes from Goodwill. I do agree, this is discrimination, but I get to keep my water hot and my lights on if I stop taking tables that only tip $3 because they are not from 2015.

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