Posted on 12/01/2012 5:13:46 AM PST by LoveUSA
Just yesterday I was leaving the food store with my 83 year old mother in my car when we encountered an old woman holding a piece of cardboard that said "homeless" (quotes were included). This old woman made eye contact with me and her scraggly gray hair, her worn clothing, and her pathetic help me expression really stirred up my sympathy. When I stopped at the stop sign near where the begging woman was standing I said to my mother, "Let's give her some something, it's Christmas". We came up with a five dollar bill and my mother waved it out the window. The begging woman took it and smiled with the few teeth she had left.
Then the semi-toothless, pathetic-looking, scraggly-haired old woman said, "Thanks! My grandkids want a video game for Christmas."
A scam so old, it pre-dates welfare.
IT’S A LIVING: Not all techies make their profits on the job. Dennis S. Buck, a deaf computer programmer (who also happened to be in a wheelchair and whose boss deemed him unpromotable) supplemented his $8-an-hour wage the old-fashioned way: peddling sign-language cards in airports and shopping malls around the country. At Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, he earned $750 to $1,000 a weekend. He describes his career in Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man, out last month from Gallaudet University Press.
The time-tested strategy was simple. Pass around cards containing a message like, “I am a deaf person selling this sign-language guide to meet my living expenses. Will you kindly make a donation?” Then circle the room again to pick up the cards or donations.
This has been going on since the late 1800s.
I just sign “Get a job” - many don’t know what I ‘said’ to them, too funny sometimes.
My wife still felt bad for him but I told her that so far as homeless people are concerned, well being homeless in Hawaii is top of the pyramid. Sure beats competing for a hot air grate in the streets of Manhattan during wintertime.
WOW - did not realize this was a long standing tradition - thanks!
“I know...I’m an idiot.”
I’d rather be a loving idiot than the paranoid cynic that I am.
You get more of what you subsidize. With every dollar you give the panhandlers, you are “voting” for them to continue panhandling.
Wen Shampoo?
“Don’t judge me”
??
She’s okay with getting free food but gets defensive when you notice her nice car? THAT’S the bad thing?
Occupy on steroids. You should feel bad you have nice things
not for being a scammer
/sarc
There are the genuine needy, even if there are likely no Lazarus types in America, and then there was the one stemming who explained “I need to do this to pay my cable TV bill.
And another who asked for a dollar to buy some orange juice. I told him to go over to the open fruit market and he could buy (then) a dozen tangerines for a dollar. He looked at me incredulously and said, “You mean peel them?”
Then there was the homeless type lady to whom i offered free bagels to, who then said, “Do you have cream cheese?” When i said no, she waled away.
We are to remember the poor, but in America even most of the poor are rich by normal standards, while the gov can be expected to make it more difficult for churches and private charities to help the needy (such as by eliminating charitable deductions) as it seeks to be look to as God, as in Communism.
When asked by people if they should give to the poor, John Vianney would often reply with a smile: "We will have to answer for why we did or didn't give, and the poor will have to answer for what they did with what is given them."
lol
what a mess
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766
Pic reminds me of a homeless lady I saw daily by the Fed building where I worked but she had a dog on a rope with her all the time. She never asked for money nor begged but if you offered to give something “for her dog” she accepted it.
One year I asked her if she would like to join me and my family for Thanksgiving dinner and she declined. Said she had to work. She and her dog had to keep an eye on things downtown. Hope she is still patrolling the streets.
In the late 50’s, I worked the midnight shift in downtown Detroit. It was not uncommon when coming into work at night or getting out in the morning to be approached and asked “Can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee?” One morning a guy staggered up to me and asked “Can you give me a dollar, I need a drink bad?” Believe me, he really looked like he was in need. He got $5 for being truthful.
Giving money to professional beggars is not any different from giving booze to alcoholics or heroin to heroin addicts. Of course often the scammers are one of those categories as well. It’s compassion mixed with ignorance to give to such people, it does only harm.
Real compassion would be directing them to some kind of Gospel Mission or Salvation Army, those organizations know how to deal with scammer homeless/beggars and can help them change for the better. Giving them money merely keeps them in their dishonesty and often lives of crime.
$5.00 in the late fifties?
A most generous gift.
I was earning $100.00 a week working full time at a fairly decent job.
Do the math.
.
I used to be a loving idiot. I became a paranoid cynic as a result of the Clinton reign of terror. I have gotten worse every year since then.
I was born a loving idiot. Life has pummeled me into a paranoid cynic.
I spent 7 years in San Francisco passing panhandling bums daily. Hourly. I became deeply jaded. I hit the point where I gave to nobody, and I do mean NOBODY and that has been my policy ever since. I would gladly help those in need but most are scammers and I don’t have the skills to recognize the ones who truly need.
My line became the same with every bum. “I don’t give money to anyone anymore. There are a lot of cheats who are just scamming. I’m sure YOU aren’t one of those and you really need the help, but I just can’t tell anymore so I just don’t give money to anybody anymore. It is a shame because I would love to help those who really need it, but I’ve been scammed so many times, I just can’t tell who needs it anymore. I’m sorry.”
That was my usual line but I could be mean when in a bad mood, which was often in Kommunist San Francisco.
One morning a guy begged for money and I just lost. I said:
“I’m not going to give you any money. You know why? Because you are ugly and if I give you money, you will just be here tomorrow. Now if you were a hot blonde woman in a bikini, I would give you $5 because I would want you to be here tomorrow begging for money. But you are ugly, and I don’t want to encourage you to be here tomorrow.”
And just walked away. Let me know if he ever picks his chin up off the ground. He had anger in his eyes but it was over-ridden by shock. I’m sure that was one he never heard before.
I finally got scammed a month back at the grocery in my current little town of Yuba City, hour north of Sacramento. I took it willingly and still hate myself for it, but what the heck.
Some middle eastern woman towing two young kids gave me a sob story about her husband leaving her suddenly and the children had no food to eat.
Me: “Sorry, I don’t give money to anybody. I can’t tell who’s scamming me. I’m sure you’re not but”
So she goes on begging.
Me: “If your husband just left you, why aren’t your cabinets still full of food?”
More excuses from her about how they’ve eaten everything in the house.
Me: “You and those children can qualify for $800 in food stamps and I’m sure you have a friend who can show you how. There is no way you are going to starve in America.”
More song and dance. She was good. She never dropped character, had a ready excuse for everything and the two doe-eyed daughters played their roles, just silently hanging on to their mother’s hand while she played me like a finely tuned violin.
I couldn’t shake her for the life of me and I honestly can’t say if I paid her off just to shut her up and get rid of her, or if I cracked and felt their might just be some TINY TINY remote impossibly miniscule possibility there was a hint of truth behind her entire riggamarole.
Anyway, I cracked. I said OK, and she was all “God bless you” and “you don’t have to give me money. Come in the store and watch me shop. I just need it for food. Come in and watch. God bless you.”
Yada.
I took out something like $80 and gave it to her and she is thanking me saying “come into the store”.
Anyway, all the time that she is working me and I’m starting to crack I’m telling a dirty crook and a no good liar and a bad example to her daughters, and that she is evil for making me feel guilty about her while she is robbing me on a scam. I tell her that on the 1% chance she really desperately needs this help then please accept my apology and I feel bad about ever doubting you, but I know in my heart you are a low life scum scammer, but you are hell of an actress because you were able to put a percent doubt in me, and if you are cheating me like I know you are, then I hope you burn in hell and your children are punished too.
I left and didn’t bother going into the store. I know she was just a no good lying scammer and I didn’t need her to go through the entire act of doing her normal grocery shopping just so she could make like her kids were honestly in need of food.
I’m sure she has pulled this off dozens of times and I’m sure she has found that none of her marks are willing to invest 20 minutes following her around the store for the lousy $10 they invested in shutting her up.
I’m still mad at myself for giving in to her scam, but she was very good. Very convincing. A natural actress.
Last time I found a con-man actress that good was 10 years before in Bakersfield when some woman scammed me out of $20 saying she needed gas to visit her dying cancer-ridden brother in Los Angeles.
Both were similar. Dirty lying scammers preying on my good nature, but both so convincing that I just couldn’t be 100% sure I was being conned. Only 99% sure and in both cases I caved on the 1% chance they were telling the truth.
Incidentally, the Bakersfield con is what lead me to change my policy and tell every panhandling bum, “I never give money anymore. Sorry. I just can’t tell who really needs it and who is scamming me. But I’m sure YOU really need it.”
Yeah. Sure.
Nowadays, you can always say, “Sorry- I don’t carry cash”. The pros snap away and head for their next mark the instant those words come out of your mouth. Had one just like that last night in the Safeway parking lot tap on my window as I was leaving. The way they break the contact off tells me whether or not they were a scammer.
Had one guy a couple of years ago approach me while I was gassing up the bike. I have an unusual motorcycle, he wanted to talk about it. He mentioned that he was down on his luck, but wasn’t asking for anything- he was just interested in the bike. He was obviously homeless. I talked to some folks that I know in the neighborhood who’d had brushes with the guy, they thought he was authentic. I helped him out as much as I could. I tracked him down and put some money in his hands and he struggled- and then cried. It killed him to have to take it.
Found out later that he’d gotten off of the street, gotten involved with a gal and was working as he could. Once in a great while you meet a real one.
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