Too Good to Go

It is the 28th of May, I use an app called 'Too Good To Go' to order a cheap breakfast for tomorrow morning. I will get the things that food businesses in Dublin will throw away. I will save money and I will stop food waste, this is a good thing. The order cost €3.99 and it was from, what I thought was a cafe, beside my new job in the RAGE. It was not from a cafe, it was from what feels like a bad thing.

Later on, I tell Anna about my breakfast. I am excited to tell and to eat, I bounce when I tell her. She asks me where the order is from, I say it is from the Wrenn, or something like that. I cannot always remember names. She says "Oh no" in response. "Oh no" is said for things that are bad. She says "...That's that hotel where Hangar used to be". I know that hotel, it is not good. It is not good that it shut down Hangar, I used to move around in there in the happy way, and it is not good that it is for tourists because they are not good for Dublin I think. They are loud and they block the footpath a lot. Sometimes I feel like I am in a big big city, the amount of them. I remember Dublin is still small, it just feeling full of them is all.

I have seen this happen on this app before. Dublin hotels (not good) sell off the end of their buffet breakfasts at around 10 or 11 am. I seen it and I thought "That is disgusting". I think that because I think of germs. There are probably germs from hands and tourist people on the (my) food, but I have already paid my €3.99 so I will go there in the morning. I will go there and become a tourist bin, a dog begging for scraps in this city.

I arrive at 10.55, I start work at 11. The receptionist says she likes my outfit, I say "Thanks" to her, I am here for the 'Too Good To Go', I am here to be at your service, I am here to be your bin. She tells me to sit and wait, I sit and wait like a dog. I am a good dog, I am an obedient citizen and the city is happy.

Every day since, I am a bin. Every day I go to my hotel for my scraps. I am fed sausages, I am fed bacon, I am fed potatoes, I am fed mushrooms, I am fed black pudding, I am fed white pudding, I am never fed chocolate (bad for dogs). They think they are doing something good with the app based scraps system, they gloat on the walls that the hotel is Ireland's first carbon neutral hotel, I see this every single day when I am going down the stairs for my feed. I start to believe they are good; I start to believe I cannot bite this hand.

Illustration by Stephen Sorensen