Panhandlers

… or beggars, which ever.

In the area I live and work there are very few homeless. The homeless seem to head into the city not to the suburbs, but this makes it very tiresome with the panhandlers we get.

Most of them are dishonest, I mean flat out liars. I think they’d get far more help from people if they didn’t lie.

Yesterday I was stopped at a gas station, I was filling up with the corporate gas card and this guy comes up to me and says “I need to get to *insert next town* and just need a gallon for gas”. Lets start with the fact Gas is about $3.50 so that would have got him 1/3 of a gallon, next the fact he kept going back and talking to his buddy in the truck like mine which means at best his 1/3 of a gallon would have got him 5 miles. But it gets better…..

I said to him, I have no cash (which was true), but if you pull your truck up I can throw $5 of gas in to get you home. He was offended and walked off muttering.

Why did he feel the need to go round a gas station for money, why did he ask for money for gas but refuse the gas, surely $1 at a time is gonna take him a while to get money?

Another one a few weeks ago was similar, this time I was in the city, a “homeless” guy asked me for $1 for food, I said I had no cash (notice a pattern here, I really should find more ATMs), but I was on my way to the deli for a sandwich and offered him one. Once again, offended and stomping off.

If these guys actually asked for money for what they wanted would they get better results? Are they less ashamed about lying about what they are begging for than begging for what they want. If the homeless guy had said about booze, I might even have got him some, I never need an excuse to look round a new liquor store!

The one that irritates me the most though is the panhandler that stands at the traffic light outside my office. He is there most days, on one corner or other. His sign just says “help, can you spare some change?”. But I get the chance to observe this guy. He is wearing $150 sneakers, $150 for shoes and you are out panhandling? The other day I noticed he was wearing a sport team jacket too, those are never cheap.

I once read a news story about people that make a fortune begging, there was one who begged all day then got in his Jag and drove back to his wife, kid and 3 bedroom house. It was simply his tax free job.

I don’t mind people in need asking for help, I like to help where I can, but it’s a minefield with all these lying fakes.