I am poor. I spend about sixty hours a week driving for every app possible just to keep creditors and homelessness at bay.

So, when I want to do something special, like take my ladylove out for this evening, I have to go make more money. In this case, by donating plasma.

This has to be done outside my working time, so last night I logged on to their website and set myself up for an appointment at 8am when they open.

Then I get up early this morning and got to the parking lot at 7:30am. There were a couple other cars waiting. At 7:45am I decided I would start the line by standing out front of the door in the cold. By 7:55am, folks began lining up behind me.

Then at 8:00am, a staff member opened the door and said, “John, Bob, Tony…” and everybody behind me came rushing past me (I’m “John,” legally). Confused, I start walking along when some woman said, “This is the VIPs, you have to get behind us.”

WHAT THE FUCK?

I specifically stood in the cold to avoid the standing in a huge indoor snake queue full of COVID-carrying humans, goddammit. What the hell is VIP for plasma donation?

It’s gonna be 9am before I even talk to a nurse. An hour here in the COVIDteria. And I left my mask in the car because, duh, I’m first in line, so I’ll only have to see masked phlebotomists between here and the exit, I type as the guy behind me coughs.

Poverty sucks. I don’t recommend it as a lifestyle.

Even worse is having left my headphones in the car. Now I’m subject to overhearing the conversations of the VIPs, ranging from domestic and family law expertise (“If he don’t have the pre-nup on paper, it’s a fart in the wind, honey”) to video games.

It could be worse. I could still be in Idaho.

UPDATE: My screening nurse helpfully explained the whole VIP thing. It’s an informal list of all the people who will be here at 8am, every Saturday without fail. Would I like to be on it, she asks.

Uh, no, but that’s not really the point. What the hell happened to the good old American cultural concept of THE LINE?

Nowhere in any of the promotional material online or on site was there ever a mention of this VIP List one could get on for Saturday morning.

There is, however, a scheduling feature on the app that allowed me to select 8am and copy that scheduling reminder into my calendar.

“I wish they wouldn’t do that,” said the nurse, exasperated by yet another client who thought the company’s app allowed them to schedule an appointment. “We’re on a walk-in, first-come, first-served basis,” she added.

“Not if you’re not on this secret VIP list, apparently,” I shot back.

The good news is it only took 45 minutes, not an hour, to see the screening tech. The bad news is that I have the slightest bruising in my left arm from my donation last week. I usually donate without issue, but the phlebotomist last week applied the tape to my arm so tightly it was making my fingers numb. I removed the bandage too soon and had a bit of bleeding.

That means I now have to sit in another waiting area for a look-over by a nurse, to ensure I’m okay to stick. I should be, but the potential for having wasted over an hour of a morning where I need to make money for tonight’s date is a little stressful.

Again, if you can manage it, don’t be poor.

UPDATE 2: Now there’s a guy called “Michael” who’s in the exact same boat as me, got here early, passed screening, now needs 2nd medical evaluation. But he’s ranting and raving about it to no one in particular as we all in the waiting area avoid eye contact. Then every five minutes he goes up to demand to speak to a manager. And yes, he’s white, of course. Squirrely, small dude dressed and haircut as if he probably enjoys steampunk costly.

As he rants about “twenty people getting in before me, some of them leaving already,” a miraculously calm older woman on staff gets him to calm down and takes him back for evaluation.

I’m ninety minutes into this, or two hours if you count when I arrived, and nobody’s even stuck me yet.

Hell of a way to make $100. Which I only get because I’m a new client to this facility. Under regular circumstances, this would net $50.

I guess that’s why Michael’s so pissed.

UPDATE 3: After sitting in the waiting area to see a nurse to 10:30am, three hours after I arrived, and seeing numerous people who arrived after me being seen, and not wanting to be a raving madman like Michael, I softly and politely asked where I was in the queue?

The tech who looked me up got a puzzled look on her face. “Says here you’re canceled. Did they call your name while you were in the bathroom or something?”

I had been sitting there the whole time. They did call “John” once, but as I went back there, another older fellow was heading back and the nurse said to him, “Come on back, John,” so I figured there are many Johns, and he was one of those 8am rush “VIPs” and must not be me.

Soon, that nurse comes around the corner. “John? I am sooooo sorry.” Long story short is that when she called John, she was calling me, but this other John jumped in front of me. He wasn’t even a VIP, but he was an older white guy with a white beard, so when he came in and she saw my pic in the chart, she thought he was me.

I just laughed. “Yeah, you know how all us older white guys look alike.” She laughed and let me know that for all my time and trouble, I would be paid the $100 today without having to donate plasma.

And now I have a funny story to tell my ladylove at dinner.

UPDATE 4: Or maybe not. After my three-hour ordeal I headed back home, a half-hour’s drive away. I was happy to have heard the nice nurse tell me, “There you go, all paid up for $100” following her series of clicks on the computer keyboard. Satisfied for making $33.33 an hour for sitting and blogging, I then caught a $9 shopping trip heading north and then a $12 food delivery heading farther north, making me $21 for the hour and gas I spent going there and back.

Then I got home and logged on to the CSL Plasma’s bank card website to find my balance is still $7. Apparently the nurse didn’t click and clack the proper keys. Maybe she sent my $100 to the other John.

Yay. Now I get to try to call someone about this. Did I mention I wouldn’t be in nearly such a pickle if I hadn’t double-paid the Verizon bill? Yeah, that was set up for auto-deduct on the 29th. Didn’t come out then, but I figure it’s the weekend, wait until May 1, the Monday. Didn’t come out then. By May 3, it didn’t come out and I’m panicking. I check the account online, no sign of them accepting, processing, or waiting for my payment. Still says payment due April 29. Says next auto-pay comes out May 29. Worried that now I’m going to miss that grace period and be charged a $40 late fee, I go ahead and pay the bill online. And, of course, right as rain, on May 4 the auto-deduct payment and the online payment I just made are both taken out.

This is the kind of thing non-poor people don’t understand about the stress and cost of being poor. If you’ve got regular income, you’ve got that cell phone bill on an auto pay and don’t even notice it getting paid. If it didn’t come out for a few days, it didn’t matter because your account has plenty of cushion if there’s a delay in $200.

But when you’re poor, you don’t live paycheck to paycheck. You live day to day. It’s literally logging onto your bank account on the night of the 28th to verify that, yes, there is enough money for the auto-deduct on the 29th to come out. It’s spending no money at all over the weekend so you know there’ll still be enough for the auto-deduct. It’s waking up on the 1st and discovering some other small auto-deducts have posted, so now you get out and drive enough to bank enough in one of the gig apps to immediately transfer (for a 50¢ to $2 fee, depending on the app) to the account to bring it back up to cover the coming auto-deduct. Then when it doesn’t and you pay online and then it does come out, it’s driving 12-hour days the next two days to get everything back to normal. And when you’re back to a level where you can even consider the first real date night in 2023 if you get up early on a Saturday and donate plasma, it’s then getting screwed on that and heading back out to drive the remaining Saturday hours before having to get ready for the date.

Poverty—it’s not for the weak.