O P I N I O N

LIZARD THINK

By Izzy DelOrfano

I lost my job because of an online customer review. I don’t know the person’s name who wrote it, and I’ll never get to tell them what happened to me because of it. The person who fired me didn’t want to – she told me straightforwardly, “it’s my boss’s decision, I have no choice.” Her boss, if I know her at all, would also probably say, “it’s a business issue- nothing against you, but I have no choice.” 

But whose choice is it then? I’d like to imagine the person who wrote the review would not have written it if they had known it would cost someone their job. There’s certainly been times I wanted to write something about a bad experience with a store or restaurant, but I didn’t, because I worried about that exact thing. Who exactly chooses what happens to me? 

There’s a popular bar near me that hosts live music events. Any time I post on social media about going there, I am inundated with messages from leftist friends telling me not to give them my money because one of the co-owners is a Trump supporter. They always send me a screenshot of the same online review, where someone saw a person in the back of the restaurant wearing a particular red hat. It’s hard for me to reconcile this. Do I want to give my money to a person who voted against my own rights, and the rights of my friends? 

But there’s too many variables. A guy has a hat, okay, that’s one thing. But the bar in question hosts a bunch of bands that are local, have anti-establishment messages, they’re scrappy and DIY – if I don’t support them, am I helping anything? Am I making it worse? If I pay $15 to get in the door, I’m paying the bands. And then I get a $15 drink, and I’m paying the guy with the hat. How much of that money actually even ends up in either of those people’s hands, and how much dematerializes into taxes and drinks at other bars? Now I’m confused and I’m out thirty bucks.

There’s a messaging error among left-leaning individuals, especially in a state like New Hampshire, purple as ever from the blows of a population of people who I think, largely, want the same things. Small businesses are great, but if you have enough money to start a small business, you’re inclined to be more right-leaning than the average 20-something who just started reading Marx. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. There are exceptions, of course, but no matter what you do, owning a business will always be for profit. 

We all know too much about each other and the world is too big. The politics of the country or the politics of 33 square miles of city? I don’t know which is more important and the longer national politics go in the direction they’re going, the muddier the water gets.

When the great Pickle Fiasco of 2025 happened, I reached out to some friends who run various nonprofits and small organizations who distribute free food. I thought it would be funny to encourage the pickle protesters, who largely complained that it was unfair that the Pickle Man was being persecuted for giving away food, to go volunteer their time. I would offer them a jar of my own homemade pickles if they provided me proof of their participation. Of course, not a single person wanted this on either side. The Pickle People wanted something to protest, and the organizers didn’t want an angry mob showing up to their carefully constructed mutual aid operations. 

I felt like the whole fiasco was completely divorced from my reality. The Pickle Man is a right-leaning guy who was defended by a right-leaning alderman, and his supporters viewed the attack on his pickles as an attack on their ideology itself. The left-leaning organizers, while themselves clearly believed in giving out food, were terrified of the potentially disasterous consequences of right-leaning parties even knowing they were giving food to people. 

“Everyone should have access to food” and “a man should be allowed to give away free food.” These statements are almost identical but ideologically couldn’t be further from each other. These people believe the same things but people who don’t know them, don’t even know they exist, wouldn’t care if they lived or died, hundreds of miles away in DC and on islands we don’t even know about, who have enough money to feed everyone, pickles or otherwise, that is what keeps these units of people apart. Isn’t that silly? But it’s not, it’s serious, and we have to take it seriously, because there are material consequences to these ideologies.

There are material consequences to every dollar given to every business, every review written, the ladder just goes up and up until you’re more likely to be related to a celebrity than to know who actually gets to decide what happens to you. Manchester business owners and employees alike, we all like to pretend that our little city is a close-knit bubble. Even the who’s-who, the drama, the who did what to get what job, it feels safe and close like a hug. This old coworker of mine works for this bar now, who’s owned by this guy, who’s kid went to school with this girl in a band, and she got her shop painted by the person who used to live with etc etc. But New Hampshire is perhaps one of the most politically divided states in the country, and it touches everything we do. And Manchester is the heart of it (sorry, Concord, but you just don’t have our aura.) 

What’s the moral here, what’s the call to action? I’m not sure. Think about the stuff you do. For Christ’s sake, read this, read a book from the Manchester City Library, or the bookstores here, not the google AI summary of it. And buy stuff here, I don’t care from who. Just don’t buy it on Amazon if you can help it, okay? Buy it from the store that fired me. 

Izzy DelOrfano is a Manchester-based graphic novelist and writer. She is an NEC graduate and SNHU student, as well as a founding member of New England Artists for Action. When she’s not selling wares at art markets or drawing comics, she spends time cooking, putzing around downtown, and hanging out with her cat. She can be reached at lizzardthing@gmail.com