I will actually take the extra 5 minutes to get where I am going and go a full block around them if I see a large group congregating ahead of me.Growing up in the suburbs of Boston I’d always see lots of homeless. It was right where the subway line started. Instead of money I’d have a few Dunkin donuts gift cards. People would come up and ask for money, I’d offer them a gift card instead. You’d be surprised at how many would say no to the gift card. Now living in a Houston “suburb” with lots of homeless I gave up on the gift card idea. Usually I just brush past them
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Just ask them if they have change for a hundred.
Begs the question: Why were you delivering food to a strip club? Or to anyone, for that matter. Meals on Wheels volunteer?Here's a new twist: there I was, delivering food in the ghetto as it happens, address is a "gentlemen's club", I pull in at the front door when suddenly a deranged hobo starts beating on my car and yelling at me incoherently. Spittle flying from his hobo-bearded ferret face, the works. Out comes the Walther, pointed straight at his wino nose. His yellowish eyes grow big and he runs off. Into the strip club.
I text the customer that I'm right outside with her food but there's a crazed hobo and I ain't getting out of my car.
Hobo reappears dragging a thug with him, and shouting excitedly: there he is, that's him!
I roll down the passenger window, wave the thug over, tell him what's up and he informs me that the crazed hobo is their parking valet. Seriously!? Well you can take the food inside then. It's ok, he says, you can bring it in. Nah man, I'm good, you take it, I ain't coming out of my car. He's like, okay, no worries, but did you really point a gun at him? - Maybe? Have a good one, byeeeee.
I looked the place up on Yelp and Google, and apparently that's their regular parking lot attendant/valet and he's know for this kind of behavior. Maybe give him at least a shave, a bath, a haircut, a yellow vest and possibly a damn Tic-Tac?
Begs the question: Why were you delivering food to a strip club? Or to anyone, for that matter. Meals on Wheels volunteer?
I've told the story before here, so I'll just requote it in this thread.I thought it was an urban legend about fancily dressed people in fancy SUVs dropping of panhandlers in prime begging locations, but today I actually saw it myself
I once had a bad day where I needed to run a bunch of errands around the area of my office at lunch but there were just too many. I asked my boss for an hour of vacation time to get it all done and hit the road. I criss-crossed all over SW Houston, crossing the SW Freeway at least a dozen times from multiple directions. There seemed to be a beggar at every overpass, no matter which direction you approached.
On this day, though, I had to retrace my steps several times. I saw many of these people more than once. And something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on it so after my errands were done, I actually started looping around on the service roads looking at these people carefully. Something weird was going on and I had a real bug up my butt to figure it out.
Something about them all was similar. They all had cardboard signs with tales of woe. That's not unusual. However, they were all brown cardboard. Real beggars will write on whatever they can get but that could be a coincidence; brown cardboard is the most common.
Then it hit me. Every Single Sign was written with the same wide, black marker in the same handwriting. The Same Person had created all the signs. This was a business run by someone who was deploying a crew of professional beggars, completely blanketing that part of town. I assume they dropped everyone off in the morning, brought them supplies during the day, and picked them up at night in exchange for a cut of the action. Whatever the details, it was clear that those dozen or more beggars were actually part of a single (potentially very profitable) business entity.
TRVTHI've told the story before here, so I'll just requote it in this thread.