Another “Homeless” guy hit me up for money yesterday. Same story about “just wanting something to eat” but wouldn’t take the food we just bought at the grocery store for some stupid reason. Excuses about the shelters, “they are full of drug dealers,” “it isn’t safe”…so we decided we need a script for running into those people.
Thus far it goes something like this:
Homeless: Sir I’m just looking for something to eat can you help me out? All I want is something to eat.
Me: Sure, you want some soup (or insert some food type that is really close by……perhaps offer to buy a few bucks in groceries)
Homeless: If you could spare a few bucks that would help more, cuz I can do (insert lame excuse for money instead of food)
Me: Well, then you are lying and you really want money and not food.
Homeless: No, I’m just hungry and I can buy what I need for tonight with money.
Me: Here is a can of soup in my hand (there really was in the last encounter we had…but this script is made up), if you don’t want food than don’t take it, but you can’t have my money. I’ll take you to a shelter, they will hook you up with food.
Homeless: That food is slop, I’m just looking for something a little better than that. (this was actually said)
Me: Are you hungry? Your asking me for food, but you won’t take the food I offer you….what do you really want?
You get the point. I’m more than a little annoyed with this kind of interaction….and the sad thing is that it is typical of my interactions.
I swear I’ve offered more food directly, and offered to hook them up at shelters more and more with little to no success. It is like they can chose what they are begging me for, and try to make me feel guilty when I don’t give them exactly what they want. I think I’m going to ask if I can stay in a shelter overnight this summer when they aren’t as busy. Then I’ll know what it is like, so I can say “No, the food isn’t that bad, and the beds aren’t either.” HELL, I saw the food they were serving at one I stopped at a few weeks back, and it looked good. I was hungry, I about asked for some…it was pretty decent cafeteria style pizza. Nothing amazing, but totally looked good.
I think maybe I need to just be more firm…Developed really scripted standard responses to everyone who comes up to me. Be really firm about only taking them to shelters to eat, and give places to stay. It isn’t like I can personally afford to feed even a tenth of the people who come up to me, or hold signs by the highway that I see. But my money goes further when I put it into shelters. I think knowing a little more about the shelters will help, but we (by we I mean Lauren did the research and I listened to her tell me about them) already spent time learning about a lot of the shelters in our area.
I swear,….this makes me soooooo mad. I just don’t get being down and out w/ no place to sleep or anything to eat, and still making up excuses why the handouts you are getting aren’t good enough. I know people personally that aren’t in much better situations, and they graciously accept whatever you would give them, and when given an opportunity to work and get things straight they do.
Well, I ended up giving the guy money anyway….I know there is something better I can do, but I just need to figure out what. Damn you Jeff for preaching about giving away things…..always makes me more scabbed to being messed with by the homeless people.
Anyway, I just wish there was a better way to counter this stuff, and really help these people….not just feed their alcohol and drug addictions, which is the only real reason people ask for food but only accept money. The guy I gave money too talked about going to Wendys across the street (when we’re at the parking lot of a grocery store, and already offered him some of our soup from our groceries), but then we saw him walking the other direction.
Well, i’m open to more help with my scripting. If you couldn’t care less about homeless people and you figure they are where they belong because they’re lazy or whatever…don’t bother posting suggestions. But otherwise post away, I’m open to ideas and want to figure this out since it makes me crazy and my conservative ideals tell me to leave them lying in the gutter cuz they are just wasting any opportunity you give the ones that won’t take your food, but my Christian understanding of life and the Bible is reeling against that.