Money, money, money

I hate talking about money, in general, but I feel like right now, I should.

I know it sounds weird, saying I hate talking about money when my job includes an obligation to control cash flow, but when I discuss work's money, it doesn't feel the same. Maybe because it feels more like a maths project or a word problem and I'm all up in those.

Just ... since when is it the be all and end all for some people? Why is the amount of money a person has a personal attribute and a sign of their attractiveness to some people? Why is money such a focus?

Sometimes, and I can't be alone in this, but sometimes I wish we had the trade systems that existed in the bronze age. You know, I grow wheat and you raise chickens so I'll trade you a bushel for a chicken and six eggs. Like the Swap Shop way back before I was born, where you could trade your My Little Pony collection for someone's Gameboy (as long as your MLP collection was substantial. Like 6 horses, the castle, and all the brushes and crap that came with them).

But no, instead I can get a flat screen 50" television by handing over a pile of green, orange, purple and red coloured bits of paper, or even better, swiping a bit of plastic through a bit-of-plastic sized gap in a bigger bit of plastic.

What is the appeal of money? Am I just sounding stuck up? I mean, I've been in a position before where I ran out of the stuff at university, and spent three weeks only eating porridge made with water. I had a bowl a day (but if my mother accidentally stumbles across this blog, it was only a week, just like I told you, that's how long I ended up starving). Now, this happened because of a paperwork mix up which meant my last loan installment was cancelled, but I suddenly had £600 in tuition fees to pay extra, and only about £700 in my overdraft. £100 left to last me for four months ... If not for that mix up, I could have handled my incomings vs outgoings better. I'm pretty amazing at doing that, because it's maths to me. I love numbers. 6+7 always equals 13, you know? 55378008 is the funniest number I can think of for a calculator.

I mean, I earn an okay amount. After bills and appeasing the five-year-old I feel I barely see, I have enough to buy some snacks for after work, and some cheap books on my kindle, and my strange addiction to the sims. But on my days off, I stay at home and write. On days I go in late, I might buy breakfast, and read while I eat, then come home and write until it's time to get ready. My petrol bill is maybe £50 for a month which seems impressive but I live a five minute drive from work, which is around the corner from my son's school.

But I would gladly give up work, if not for my bills, to concentrate on making my son a tolerable teenager and then adult. I could concentrate more on my writing, maybe even make it a career. It's the obligation to the bills that keeps me in employment. That's not a bad thing, it makes me motivated and keeps my brain working. Therefore, I like my work (though I hate some of the challenges) and except for some moral dilemmas, I probably won't leave.

That's probably true for so many people. Okay, it'd be nice to be able to have the occasional night out, but for me these days that's dinner with friends and home. I haven't been out drinking for about a year (and I honestly don't miss it, with my health problems, alcohol can knock me out) and I know for a lot of people, a Friday Night means going out, having a good time, crawling into bed early Saturday with the promise of a hangover and a fry up.

So why is money still such an issue? Why is it such a crime if the government takes 20% from everyone's wages, to the point where they have a tiered system so the more you earn the more tax you pay? You can bitch about the price of taxes all you want, but when you damage your car on a pothole, or that traffic light doesn't work, or you need a police or army presence ... remember how you bitched about those taxes. Remember how grudging you felt about contributing to the price of that police officer's wages (and how they're struggling to pay for childcare and therapy for all the things they've seen, on top of rent and bills and food) and remember how filling that pothole actually costs less than the damages to your car.

Why do books focus on it so intensely? The Cullens in Twilight have "enough spare cash stashed around the house to equal the GDP of a small nation" (spare cash, indeed). Christian Grey in 50 Shades is a Billionaire at 27 (with fairly shoddy business practices). The characters in Kate Brian's Private series and spin-off are all children of Millionaires and Billionaires (the main character is a scholar case, until she finds out she's the half-sister of her Billionairess friend. Conveniently making her rich too). Mills and Boon is full of aristocrats ... even I'm guilty of it. I chose a location in my book where you have to be rich, I chose a family who were wealthy enough to make a cross-Atlantic move (one of the criteria for living in America as an immigrant is having over a million dollars, it was a justification of how they could move so easily over). But why, why does money have to be a factor?

And why does money drive people to act unethically? What could make someone think 'there's five pounds. I know it's not my five pounds, but I want five pounds and it's there'? How can you justify going 'that's money and I want money so I'm taking money even though taking money is unethical and a crime'? Why do people not communicate more? "I need more money as I haven't worked my finances out properly yet I can't get a bank loan and I am terrified of the substantial APR of a payday loan, can you please help me before I get in further trouble?" because if someone I cared about was in that position I would do something. Like when I was broke, and eating a bowl of porridge a day and going through all those problems I mentioned before, and then my friend sent me a care package. In that package were wooden roses, crisps and chocolate. She'd written "I can't give you money, but you shouldn't forget the taste of chocolate" in her note. I didn't want her money, but her support meant everything. But even if they needed fifty quid from me, I would do that for someone I love, and I probably wouldn't expect it back, not unless my balances depended on having it back by a certain time.

People I work with marvel at the fact that I go to America every year, more or less. I went twice last year, but I won't this year and didn't the year before. They can't see how I can afford it, but I have a few tricks - buying plane tickets early, either using my parents timeshare, or else going to websites that have apartment homeshares (it's what my friends and I did to stay in New York. That whole trip cost us £700 each for flights and accomodation. Some hotels couldn't even give us that for the week). I used to use STA which gives discounts for under 26 year olds (currently, I believe you can get a round-the-world trip for £900. I used them in 2005 and got a flight-and-hotel deal for New York for £300 each for me and a friend. You can't even fly and stay in Greece for that. Yes, we stayed in the YMCA and it was gross, but for that cheap ...) it's not about the price, it's about making things work with what's available, doing the research and going for the kill. Like, my older sister will wait until something she wants is on discount and then bulk-buys. At the ASDA toddler-and-baby event, she bought a wall of nappies and wipes for her son (when he was still in her womb), recently her husband's favourite hot chocolate was on offer for 1kg tubs, so she bought nine. Maybe my mum just taught us right.

I mean, I remember (just about) being seven, and all into the Quints, these five babies in barbie-doll style. They brought out Quints Cousins, which were these triplets who looked after the Quints like babysitters, and I wanted them. They cost £4, and I got 75p a week pocket money. I remember going up to my parents and saying 'if you give me 25p of my pocket money for the next four weeks, then can I get the dolls, and carry on getting 25p until they're paid off?' I was negociating loans for what I wanted at the age of seven (and still having enough for penny sweets). They said yes, by the way. But I had the foresight even then of thinking within my means and working out how to get what was outside those means into something achievable. Why is this sort of thing not taught more often?

Someone I work with got caught taking money from a till the other day. It was in the office and they went in and helped themselves, not thinking about the CCTV that's aimed directly at the desk. You can tell who it is clearly (we recently got an upgrade on the CCTV, it's like HD. Someone who has barely worked with this person could identify them) and it's someone I trusted to pretty much help run an area of the store. It's someone who refuses to use tills, who has little to do with them. Someone who was in the running for a promotion. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut all night, and the crew were asking for details and I couldn't say anything. I had to sit in the suspension meeting, and this person is getting fired today. The other managers are saying the same things I was (I feel sick, what a c*nt, etc etc. I really hate that word, but it felt justified, we all trusted and liked this guy) when we were in a meeting yesterday (a pretty hard meeting for me, I woke up at 9am on Sunday, left work at 10am on Monday after the night shift, slept for two hours and then came in for it) and the atmosphere is just horrible. Because this has been going on for months, money and phones and stuff going missing, and he's been in the building when those incidents happened. I think we're all being pissed off, we didn't get to management without a certain amount of intuition and quick thinking. He was way down the list of people we'd suspect. We were at the start of an investigation for this missing money and I'd given a statement to our boss (since I was on shift when it may have happened, then left before it was noticed) and he was watching the CCTV and saw it ... I don't think even he believed it.

I was in the room twice when it got shown, the first time was for me and the police officer who works with us part-time (she was giving our boss advice on possibility of prosecution, so a nice soundtrack to accompany the kick in the crotch) but the second time, I couldn't lift my head. I trusted them, I liked them, this person being on the shift was a sign of a good shift, and I just feel sick with the idea that money is so Goddamn important that people can just take it because it's there. How can you risk your job, your life, a criminal conviction, for a few measly quid? I'm so glad today is my day off, because I couldn't watch him get fired too, or arrested, or whatever may happen today. I feel like I trust far too many people far too easily, and I was so sure my intuition could pick this sort of thing up. I hate second guessing myself, and I'm sure all the other managers feel the same way. I hate that the crew who were on with me Sunday when they got sent home kept telling me there must have been some mistake (they didn't know about the CCTV, or what the person was suspected of stealing, just that he was suspended for theft) and all I could do was say that our boss would have his reasons.

I woke up thinking about it this morning. It's going to play on my mind for a long time.