Lucas can absolutely work. Supported Employment is a concept designed for people who would otherwise be incapable of supporting themselves via employment. I recently witnessed a very cool success story that I think is relevant to Lucas.
I’ve been on a care team for a guy I’ll call “Bill”. Now Bill has a diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder, which means he is really eccentric and most people are going to find simply being around him off putting. His hygiene is terrible, his social skills are nearly non-existent, he is obsessed with children’s cartoons, if he had a social media presence he would undoubtedly have a thread here. To give you an idea how Bill operates, the first day I saw him, I was given a note informing me that Bill was in the lobby loudly talking about smegma when they came to get vitals. Naturally this needs to be addressed and so I had to extend our appointment fifteen minutes so I could establish some rules about lobby behavior, which he didn’t take well and concluded there was sophisticated surveillance equipment that was monitoring him (Bill was oblivious to the room full of people staring at him in disgust).
So Bill isn’t going to be taking your food order, he isn’t going to man a checkout line, he isn’t going to be washing your car, or doing any type of job that requires him to communicate with the general public. Bill is on disability and all his needs are met, but the guy would like some disposable income and wants to work for it. The social worker assigned to Bill gets him some vocational rehabilitation and before long Bill takes and completes a five week course on cabinetry.
Now Bill gets a job and is assigned a sheltered workshop, he works for a company that provides furniture for hospitals, V.A. offices, and other federal and state buildings. If he doesn’t have any pending work orders (which is often the case), he can build whatever he likes as long as he provides the materials. This is intentional and Bill is encouraged to advertise his skillset and make custom pieces to order, like an independent craftsman.
Usually, hospitals and other facilities hold “craft fairs” where people who have been receiving treatment can showcase stuff they learned how to make and sell them. Think of someone who does a long inpatient stay and really takes to art therapy, so a reasonable goal for them when transitioning to outpatient services is to open an etsy store or something like that to see if they can earn some extra money doing something they enjoy. Since COVID, these kinds of events don’t happen anymore, but staff are allowed to purchase things. I knew Bill didn’t have a lot of people in his life, so I went ahead and ordered a couple of bookshelves from him through the workshop and last week I went there to pick them up. Really solid work, better than Target and not much more expensive, he even went on Youtube to pick up some new techniques for the order. I was (and am) extremely proud of him for not only wanting to work, but for actually putting in legitimate effort to learn a new skill set and having the discipline to improve upon it.
So what does this have to do with Lucas? I guarantee you Lucas has been offered these kinds of things before, being on SSI automatically qualifies you for it. He’s probably even tried such a program in the past. Lucas will never, ever, be meaningfully employed, and any posturing about writing a resume or making calls is simply a bluff. It isn’t because he is stupid, or his fat unkempt body is incapable, or because he is bi-polar, all these factors can be accommodated.
Narcissism will keep Lucas unemployed for the rest of his life. Simply by the virtue of having a social media presence, Lucas firmly believes that he can monetize the low-effort activity. He truly thinks his antics and opinions amount to a kind of performance art that merits compensation. Every time someone sends him a bucket of chicken to be on a podcast or sends him thirty bucks for a shout-out video, it acts as an affirmation of his wildly inflated sense of worth.
I’m not saying that what is keeping Lucas from getting a job are the people sending him money, he isn’t going to work regardless of that. He doesn’t view himself as the kind of person who should have to earn money, that he is exempt from such an activity. This is probably what all his political views are rooted in, being able to opt out of gainful employment because paychecks and taxes are all about greed.