Marie Buchan, a 37-year-old mother of eight from Birmingham, England, receives almost $40,000 a year in welfare benefits and says she's "too beautiful" to work.
She has been trying to get experience as a mechanic, but says she has only met sleazy men at all the garages she has tried. “They’re not really after me working there, they’re looking for something more," she told The Daily Star. "I think they’re just dirty big perverts."
British media have taken to calling her "Octomum" because of her large family. Her eight kids are between the ages of three and 15.
She has been roasted in the past by the media for leeching off the welfare system, but she says that when she tries to find work, she gets hit on instead. "They’ll say things like, ‘What do you do when the kids aren’t around, would you fancy going for a drink, would there be anything else you’d like to do in the garage other than work on cars?’"
She says she wants to work in a garage specifically to combat sexism around cars.
"I’m sick of driving into a garage where most mechanics seem to think, ‘We can rip her off, she’s a woman,’" she says. “It’s always been my dream and women are always getting ripped off – I want to put a stop to that.”
However, her dream seems to be in peril because, as her studies near completion, she can't find a place to get an apprenticeship.
“You’ve got women in the police force, in the Army, we have the skills, it’s just that men see us as sex symbols," she says. “I’m not going to be able to get the experience I need in a garage full of men. But there aren’t any women mechanics in my area, so I don’t know where it’s going to come from.”
This isn't the first time Marie has tried to get a job while claiming benefits, however.
This isn't the first time Marie has tried to get a job while claiming benefits, however.
For a while, Marie worked 16 hours a week as a personal support worker, a job she hated.
Of course, most of us have worked through jobs we've hated for years just to pay the bills. But because she only worked 16 hours, she could still claim benefits while she worked.
No surprise, when she went on a morning show and told the hosts she was working AND claiming benefits, viewers unleashed some serious anger.
"This woman is horrendous. Try working 40+ hours a week and raising your kids like millions of single parents do," one viewer tweeted.
Needless to say, that job didn't last for Marie.
She said that because of her part-time job, her kids no longer qualified for free school lunches. Feeding her kids lunch five days a week was costing her more money than she made at her job, so she was "better off not working."
So it's to her credit that she's training to be a mechanic and get off welfare.
But her announcement that she intends to get a boob job doesn't help her case much in the public eye...
Even though she claimed her boyfriend would be paying for her boob job, the optics aren't great.
Nevertheless, Marie told the Daily Star that "“I am doing this for myself not for anyone else. I feel after having eight children I need a little bit of help firming things up.”
Add in the fact that she's a former lap dancer and people have a difficult time taking her seriously.
Mind you, she hasn't done herself many favors.
In the meantime, Marie still says she's trying to prove herself as a mechanic.
“If someone would just give me the opportunity, I would prove them wrong," she said. "I know exactly what I am doing.”
What do you think of Marie's case? Is she making excuses, or does she have a legitimate beef?
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