I work at a grocery outlet- that would be, a store that sells damaged/overstocked/out of code foods- foods that people generally don't want- at discount prices.
I think it's fair to say that the people who shop at my store a generally 'economically disadvantaged'. A good portion of them are pretty... destitute, to the point that they rely on foodstamps to buy their groceries.
Generalizations are pretty mediocre forms of explaining scenarios, that's true. However I would say that the majority, probably a vast majority of people who rely on foodstamps and come into my store are regular, kind, friendly, decent, etc. people who've just fallen on hard times. Lots of them even have jobs but just can't support themselves on that job. Actually one of my coworkers was on foodstamps for a long time. There are other people who come in who are in some way or another obviously disabled to the point where it makes it difficult to find a job to support themselves on.
Many people are visibly embarrassed when they tell me they're paying on EBT... I've had to walk lots of people through the process because they've never used the card before.
Another thing is that without these customers, my store would probably go out of business.
Now, there are certainly people who would seem to manipulate the system to some degree (although I can't even say I have any evidence for this, I guess it's more of a reaction at people who act rudely or as if they're entitled or in some other way rub me the wrong way to make me think less of them), but they are fairly few and far between. And realistically... foodstamps are not some sort of gravy train, I'm really not sure where people get this idea. I rarely see that people have more than $4-500 in their allowance (our receipts show the balance), so if you're living completely off of the system somehow, you're realistically stealing what, six or seven thousand dollars a year, that you can only spend on food. Yeah, to a lot of people that's a lot of money, but if you want to talk about stealing from the government (or even stealing out of an individual's pocket), there are people who do probably many times more than that on a daily basis. These are the people that are the problem.
The source of contempt for people who rely on foodstamps to eat is certainly... interesting, but whatever it is the contempt itself is very misplaced.
