Cynthia “Cyn” Carranza meticulously scavenged for a shady parking spot in the car she called home.
The overnight custodian at Disneyland has to sleep during the day - a difficulty for anyone, let alone when you’re living in your car with two dogs. Ms Carranza says she makes $20.65 an hour (about £15.99) at the park but last summer, she couldn’t afford rent in this Southern California city where the average apartment can run more than $2,000 (about £1,550) a month.
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Ms Carranza, like others who work at the park, detailed to the BBC the financial hardships that come with working at what’s supposed to be the “Happiest Place on Earth”. About 10,000 union workers at Disneyland - the first of 12 parks created around the globe - are threatening to strike over the wages and what they say are retaliatory anti-union practices.
Hundreds of workers protested outside the park this week, with an array of signs and pins showing Mickey Mouse’s gloved fist in defiance.
“Mickey would want fair pay,” workers chanted outside Disneyland near the park’s gates.
They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.
If I had to live in a car, I wouldn’t have two dogs.
In other words you think it’s reasonable to criticise homeless people for not giving up and abandoning their companions and dependants, who provide comfort and love in the bleakest of times, as soon as times got hard… Classy.
I would criticize anyone wasting money on an animal while living so close to their means that homelessness could conceivably be in their near future. Sometimes you have to make choices you don’t want to; she probably never had the means to support those animals. The argument isn’t that she should get rid of them, it’s that she never should have had them in the first place. Animals are expensive, and I also wonder what she could do now if she had all the money she spent on them over the years of ownership.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for $20/hr being considered a livable wage. Disney should be ashamed. Anyone working a full time job should be able to afford a pet if they want one. I just also believe in personal accountability.
Speculation, and baseless at that.
Things change, bud. I have a stable job now, have had it for over five years, but I might not in a month or a year. Dogs live for longer than that.
I think a pretty good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself speculating about someone else’s life or the future, there’s probably a lot you don’t know, so dial down the judgement.
I’m just operating on the information I was given. In a vacuum, all other things being equal, animals are a net cost, one she clearly cannot afford. I’m not speculating any more than that.
She probably had the dogs before she ended up in the car. And yes, expecting her to give them up is asking way too much of her before anyone suggests it.