Some of the moms here in town keep toiletry bags in their car for this purpose. Hotel/sample shampoo, conditioner, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, razors, and a blanket. With pads and tampons added in the female bags. Many of them work with a group that helps out shelters and helps people moving into housing get what they need for clothes and furnishings, and those basic toiletries are what they have been told time and time again is needed. Along with the blankets, of course. Faced with buying food or washing their hair, the truly down on their luck will buy food every time, and personal hygiene goes by the wayside as a luxuryā¦ Good on ya for helping out.
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All the charities in Indianapolis have said to not give money to panhandlers. But to give it to charities. You can question their motives, but not as much as some random person standing on a street corner.
Thing is, Iāve seen them spell each other for breaks, the same people stand at the same corners for months, at the same times, and Iāve seen some of them get picked up and a couple walk a block over to their car to go home.
The fact is, some of them may need help, and you canāt pay your mortgage with a nightās stay at the mission. Americans, the greedy selfish people of the world, give so much money away to people who they know may easily be scammers that they can make a living at it, at damn near every popular intersection. Yet the shelters are barely keeping open because of lack of funding.
Itās easy to give to the girl on the street corner, and it buys some relief from feeling guilty from the new car driving from the awesome job to the new house. When I was younger, my ex-wife and I used to buy them bags of groceries, didnāt take long to get tired of the disgusted looks from the āneedyā people.
I like the space blanket idea. It doesnāt put you in the hole, and if they really need something itās useful. But I wouldnāt do it to any of the ones I drive by on a daily basis. And the only time I have given lately is the guy whoās sign said he got a job at the Honda plant and said he needed gas money until his first check. He was clean, dressed in work clothes, and was only there for a week. The other crew have been swapping corners for the last year or two and they all have their schtick.
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Last year, I was approached by a homeless guy on the way into a restaurant, asking for food money. Refused him, obviously.
A couple hours later, I left said restaurant with a bag containing 2 full racks of BBQ ribs. And approached by that same guy, begging for food money again. I told him I didnāt have any cash, but he was welcome to take one of the racks of ribs (they were nicely packaged in foil trays w/ lids). Nope, kept demanding food money. I told him, straight out āI am offering you food so you donāt have to go buy itā and he refused.
Whether he was dentally equipped to eat said ribs is debatable. They were pretty tender.
I sometimes get approached at the railway station by people asking for āmoney for a train ticketā.
I always say Iāll buy them a ticket.
I have never yet actually bought someone a ticket.
I have paid for numerous bus trips when someone jumps on without enough cash / credit on their bus card. Iām aware that some of them may have been scammers, but I donāt really care. Even if none of them were genuine thatās on them, not me.
Iām pretty sure that some of them were genuine and genuinely grateful though.
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With my job, itās completely random as to what person Iāll see where, so picking up on the patterns of those who camp out at a spot are more difficult. Plus, I donāt have power windows in my truck, so if theyāre on the passenger side, sometimes I canāt stop long enough to lean over and roll the window down to hand them anything.
I will admit there are times where Iāve used that as a reason to deliberately not give people anything. Thereās also times where Iām sure Iāve been approached in a parking lot because I still have my work shirt on and they know if I say no, it can be interpreted as the company I work for refusing to help.
Iāve only handed out a few of the blankets, but two people seemed pleased to get them. So maybe thatās enough. However, there are some patterns I can spot, even if itās the first time Iāve seen someone:
- If someone is smoking or drinking when theyāre on the corner, that sends a clear message that any money will likely go towards more of that instead of food.
- Havenāt seen this yet, but if I saw a Starbucks coffee cup in their hand, Iād skip them because theyāre obviously getting enough money to afford pricey coffee instead of from a convenience store.
- And if someone has brought a bucket, milk crate or something else to sit on, then that tells me theyāve found itās better to be on that corner than using it as a temporary means of getting some help.
Not Always Right has their āLiars & Scammersā category, but every so often, you might run into something like this: Homeless is where the heart is, part 8.
I think Iām too jaded. There are so many professional beggars in the SF bay area that I actually find myself getting angry when someone approaches me with their sob story. Iāve seen a guy get $10 from one person for ābus fareā then tell another person the same story five minutes later. He hung around for the entire 45 minutes or so I was in the area (eating at a food truck with some friends) and he probably got about $30 in that time.
On the other hand, when I travel, I usually get a bus or rail pass for the area Iām in, and thereās usually some left on it when Iām ready to go home. Iāll find someone at my last stop who looks like they could use a bit of help and hand them my pass and tell them how much is left on it and wish them a good day.
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No beggars in my current AO, but there were regulars who hung out near the paint store.
I saw more than one person stop for lunch at the nearby drive though and buy two meal, stopping to hand one to the ābeggar.ā As soon as they were around the corner heād throw the box of food in the bushes.
āWill work for foodā said the sign. Uhā¦ huh.
More than one nice guy painter also offered guys like that a ride to and from a job site, and a promise of a minimum wage dayās pay, if they would come to the jobsite and do minor stuff - cleanup, sweeping, toteānāfetch.
None ever got a temp employee out of it.
A dollar every 5 minutes beats $7.25 an hour.
And really, you have to be reasonably healthy and consistent to do this. You donāt see too many homeless people that actually make it out to the burbs. Most of these people could likely do a job, heck all it takes right now is a willingness to show up and try and youāre assistant manager in 4 months.
Iām sure some of them have some sort of record, which seems to be the only disability you canāt get compensation for.
dafuq just happened?
Seriously. Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot. Just. Happened.
āitāll be all right.ā
Unfortunately, I could not.
Story time. (I apologize for the references that only @MSUAlexis is likely to get.)
Driving east on I-70, I the the ramp to US 33 East. Thereās a light there and thereās a car on the berm who wants to merge in. Not enough space for him to do it there, so he pulls down into the right turn lane and when the light does turn green, I leave him plenty of space to pull in. Just getting up to speed when he pulls a hard right and smacks right into a light pole which snaps and falls into the road, blocking both eastbound lanes.
I pull over. Not only to see if heās okay (he is), but to pull the pole out of the road. (Two SUVās deliberately drove over the pole before I could get out there. A$$hats.) I, the driver and one other Good Samaritan, drag the pole to the berm and flip it out of the way.
Then I learn the reason why I canāt say āItāll be all right.ā Car isnāt his. He borrowed it from a friend. (All tires intact, so my guess is a broken axle or break lock up.) Worse, he was on his way to a job interview.
I hope he gets through this, but there wasnāt one damn thing I could do to really help him. I just know that when Iām having a bad day, I have a new standard to compare it to.
So thatās what that report was about. I was listening to the traffic and heard it, but kinda tuned out becauseāit was the 33 on the other side of town from where I was driving. Good job stopping though. Most people wouldnāt over thereā¦
The hard drive on my Mac Mini (which runs a lot of my ālifeā stuff as I donāt yet trust the Hackintosh fully) isnāt failing.
(Iāve got a 500 gig SSD on order, which should keep it happy until itās shut down for good.)
My employeeās house didnāt burn down this morning.
Oh, no! I hope everyone is okay!
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Ditto @Nabiki!
Thatās awful
The humans are all fine, as are most of the animals. The cats didnāt make it, and somehow in the course of fighting the fire all the laying hens diedā¦ Probably the chemicals. We are doing some donations drives and stuff for themā¦Sheās supposed to have open heart surgery soon, and she has five kids, two of which are her sisterās kids because her sister doesnāt take good care of them. And her dad is currently deployed. And sheās still youngā¦ We all just feel so helpless.
Really, Not Always Right? Resorting to clickbait for advertising?
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Add this to your adblock filters - it gets rid of all of them. Otherwise itās a pain as you have to individually get rid of each element.
/ez_aba_load
You do know that most of the things you post on FaceSpace is sensationalist crap, right? (This is someone who posts stuff like āAborted fetuses used in vaccinesā or āConfirmed that Obama was behind 4 million fraudulent votesā)
What I did post: And happy April Foolās to you too!
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