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Some years ago, I helped start our church’s food pantry with the hope of helping the people who really needed it. It wasn’t intended to be a monthly resource for the same people over and over. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to see things going off the rails with the same people calling for appointments, always having six or more children, and a good number of people who showed up for appointments being obese, including the children. My desire to try and verify the people and whether they were already receiving government assistance was met with resistance.

Also, the other two who helped start the pantry didn’t have the same opinion as I did as to how we should stock. I didn’t want any junk foods at all while they protested ‘it was for the children’ who may not know how to cook and that they needed those granola bars, pop tarts, cereal bars, and other snacks. It wasn’t unusual for one of the others to show up with cupcakes, cookies, and even decorated sheet cakes to give out.

Then I noticed how many of the people picking up the food preferred to not even carry their food to their vehicles so not only were the workers packing and bagging the food, checking people in and out, but we were also having to carry food to the waiting vehicles. Helping an elderly person or someone who really needed it wasn’t a problem. But when I hustled some bags of food to a car and found two men sitting in there, smoking, I put the food down, rapped on the window, and then told the men that they needed to get out of the car and help carry their free food.

What finally made me personally walk away was the repeated so-called emergency calls from people claiming that they needed food for their children so we would make an exception to the number we were serving, add them to the list, and pack up food. If it rained, those ‘emergency cases’ were nearly always the ones who didn’t need the food badly enough to show up. After that, I decided I didn’t need the stress and stopped being involved at all. I have no regrets about walking away and not being involved now but I sure do wish I had done it sooner.

Peach

My son worked at the Food Pantry when he was in middle school. He came home and announced many of the cars had empty cigarette and beer cartons. It was still a good experience for him. The best thing about the Food Pantry is the giving and serving.

Asking for food for your children on Facebook is like the Baby Milk Factory in Iraq. They always have an excuse for why they can’t. They don’t have a car. They can’t go to the food pantry. The children have a special diet so just give them money.