Beggar on the Train (again) and I finally have had enough

[ImmBarb]

The shoes are a good idea, but please consider this: I gave a pair of good boots I had bought for my son (he never wore them, and out grew them) to a homeless person I know. So now he has a very nice pair of boots for the winter. Believe me he was grateful, every time I see him he thanks me again.

[Mr Hero]

The shoes are a good idea, but please consider this: I gave a pair of good boots I had bought for my son (he never wore them, and out grew them) to a homeless person I know. So now he has a very nice pair of boots for the winter. Believe me he was grateful, every time I see him he thanks me again.

I think it's fair to say that ratty shoes are a sign of genuine need, while good shoes doesn't prove or disprove anything, and should consider other methods to determine need, like offering food.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Sometimes it's obvious what they're after.One came up to me at the bus station desperate to get back to another town-it was his lucky day,but he was not impressed-'What's this?''It's my bus ticket.I've finished with it,so you can use it-you should be able to get back home.' He didn't want that,he wanted the money....

On the other hand,there was one chap who got talking to a friend and hadn't eaten for a day or two because he was saving his money to try and buy a sleeping bag.She agreed to buy him the sleeping bag-he was so pleased as he now had something nice and warm-and could eat again.

[WishfulSpirit]

Agreed you can't tell by how they look. I wear a suit to work. I paid $10 for it at a thrift store. I don't look like I have $3.50 in my checking account but that is in fact the case at the moment.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Agreed you can't tell by how they look. I wear a suit to work. I paid $10 for it at a thrift store. I don't look like I have $3.50 in my checking account but that is in fact the case at the moment.

I have quite a lot of expensive items, all of which were either presents, bought cheaply in the sale or even more cheaply from charity shops. However, I am not rich (wish I was).

Also, my mum's been to Harrods and has seen rich women buying a ton of shopping dressed as tho they're about to muck out the pigpen. Clothes are no indication of how wealthy a person is.

[Pixelated]

The shoe thing was interesting, but as subsequent posts have pointed out, good sturdy shoes don't necessarily prove anything, one way or another.

All you can do, really, is go with your gut instinct. We used to have a young guy who stood on the boulevard (concrete divider in the middle of a VERY busy road; at least two lanes in each direction -- for anybody who didn't know ) holding a sign that indicated he was sick and couldn't work.

Um, but you can stand in the middle of the road for several hours, coincidentally right beside the left-hand turn lane that leads into the parking lot of the city's busiest mall, holding up a sign? Something about it didn't feel right. I heard later that he'd been offered more than one job and replied that he'd rather be doing this. Yeah, no. I think donations dried up pretty fast after that; I haven't seen him in many months.

Compare that to the elderly man sitting quietly in the middle of a huge parking lot with a tin can and a sign asking for help. He wasn't even sitting where most people were parking; he was sitting in the area for the overflow parking (assuming the overflow ever got THAT big). So he was certainly not bothering anybody. I walked over to give him money and as I did so, a pickup truck pulled up and the passenger leaned out to give him money also. He politely thanked us both. Was he a genuine needy case? Did the money go for food, booze drugs?

Make a decision in each individual case and then go with it, and don't try second-guessing yourself. That's an exercise in futility at best.

[mjr]

I deal with this sometimes on my way to/from work, and sometimes on my way to/from lunch. I work in a skyscraper in a major metro, and they used to have an underground walkway that I could use. They started doing renovations on the outside of the building about a year or so ago, and so we've had to take surface streets.

Anyway, there's one area where I have to come out of one building where there's a coffee shop and a couple of other restaurants, walk down the sidewalk, cross the street, and walk past another building to get to my workplace.

Over the past two or three weeks, I've been "asked" (sometimes to my back) if I had any change, or had people try to get my attention who I think were going to try to ask me for money. I kept walking.

One guy even tried to hit me up before I even made it out of the building with the coffee shop in it. Another guy was standing on the corner, and I basically had to ignore him. Another had just finished a cigarette and was standing between where I cross the street and the building where I work.

[EricKei]

the boulevard (concrete divider in the middle of a VERY busy road; at least two lanes in each direction

I've heard of "boulevard" as a synonym for "major street," but never in the context you mentioned. In most of the US, you described a "median." In the New Orleans area, that's a "neutral ground" (because that's what they were literally used as in the past).

[Lace Neil Singer]

We call that a "traffic island".

[notalwaysright]

There's a guy that's always on a certain intersection and he seems real. Mostly because he's there all the time, even early in the morning, when it's dark and cold and raining and not that much traffic. I figure, if a person doesn't really need to, would they be at an empty intersection at 5 AM? Who knows. Can't remember if I mentioned it, but the local cops have several body cam videos of homeless camps in large parks around here. Just awful, trash, likely bicycle chop shop, human excrement. Also, at least one of camps is inhabited by a guy that could live with relatives, but chooses to live in the woods. These camps take thousands to clean up. I know there could be mental heath issues and all, and I try not to be close minded about it, but arg.

[Slave to the Phone]

Sadly enough, I interview at least 1 homeless person a day. I say sadly because I always feel sorry for them, not because I don't like working with them.

Chronic homeless people are usually very easy interviews that are completed quickly. I am timed on my interviews, so fast ones help my average times. They usually don't have any work history, so I don't need to make those calls. If they are panhandling, all I need is for them to write a statement as to how much they make a month.

Sometimes, they don't know how to write. I make them tell me what to write and then they sign. Sometimes they can't understand how to set the pin for their EBT card. This is something I am not supposed to do, but if I think they really don't understand, I will do it for them.

I've been doing this for almost 2 years now. I can count the scammers I interviewed on the fingers of 1 hand. The number of confused, desperate, hungry and homeless people I've interviewed are legion. Most are either mentally ill or have some very serious learning disabilities. Just the sort of person who can't navigate the process to get SSI, but also just the sort of person who really needs it.

I'm thinking that this rant is getting really close to fratching material, so I'll just stop.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The shoes are a good idea, but please consider this: I gave a pair of good boots I had bought for my son (he never wore them, and out grew them) to a homeless person I know. So now he has a very nice pair of boots for the winter. Believe me he was grateful, every time I see him he thanks me again.

Or the shoes could have been acquired when times were good and that person actually had a little money to spend on them. Although that likely isn't the case in this particular instance.

Kind of like how some people will judge others for using food stamps or other forms of government assistance while having their hair dyed, or tattoos. That doesn't necessarily mean anything.

[WishfulSpirit]

Got another one today when Roomie and I were having lunch at McDonald's. You apparently can't even be INSIDE a freaking place of business and be left alone. We said "sorry no" and he just kept pushing for us to buy him lunch. I once again had to threaten to use pepper spray to get the guy to back off, even a "we said NO, now go away" didn't work.

As we finished our lunch we heard a totally different guy walking out the door muttering (ok more like LOUDLY complaining) about how they have no right to threaten to call the cops on him.

I think I'm just going to avoid the 16th street mall for a while. All I want is to do whatever I came to do in peace. I do not need or want to be accosted by people making demands for things they don't intend to pay for. I work at a hotel. I get that enough at work.

[mjr]

Got another one today when Roomie and I were having lunch at McDonald's. You apparently can't even be INSIDE a freaking place of business and be left alone.

This happened to me and a buddy of mine a couple of years ago. We had walked down the street from the office, and we took a different route, because we wanted to try a different place. We got approached at least twice before we got there, and then a lady comes in, sees us, and asks us if we can either give her money or buy her food, I forget specifically which.

[taxguykarl]

It has been the norm for panhandlers to ply their "trade" for want of a better term in the tax office I run a gauntlet of them daily--seriously there are cases of these people getting into fistfights for the good spots.