About a year ago, I was approached on Madison Avenue by a respectable-looking, well-spoken man who gave me a plausible and complex story about why he needed to borrow $20 for a cab, and how he’d mail it right back to me tomorrow. Well, I was 75% sure I was being had, but the story was so good–as was his act–that I erred on the side of the angels and gave him a $20 and my business card.
Needless to say, I never saw that $20 again, and was furious that a streetsmart New Yorker like myself could be sucked like a rube.
So, tonight, the same guy comes up to me and starts handing me the same sob story! He got five seconds into it before I exclaimed loudly, “Say, you’re the same sonofabitch who scammed me outta twenty bucks last year!” Well! He got a very chagrined “oops!” look on his face and took off like a rabbit (I hope, right under the wheels of a truck).
It was worth the $20 to be able to call him a sonofabitch to his face and see his reaction.
I had something similar lo these many years ago, shortly after I moved to Madison. This woman came up to me while I was sitting in my car and told me a sob story about needing a couple bucks to buy a bus ticket to Milwaukee. There were more details and I was young and kind-hearted then so I gave her a couple bucks. A week or so later she approached me on the street and gave me the same story. I shamed her, but apparently not enough that she didn’t continue approaching me about once a month for the next couple of years (either she failed to recognize me or she got off on the shaming). Once when I was with a friend who worked at a bank, where it turns out she had an account with a sizable balance. He really shamed her and she seemed to have vanished from town shortly thereafter. I still kinda hate her though.
I was having some obvious car trouble in the Safeway parking lot when I got approached by a nice-seeming woman with a British accent. She got $20 and wrote down my address so she could mail it back to me.
Then she said, in a cheerful-cautionary tone of voice, “You wouldn’t give your home address to a stranger, would you?” And instead of assuring her she was obviously trustworthy, which by the politeness rules I was supposed to do, I just friendlily said, “No, my work!”.
And I had given her my work address, sort of out of general-principles damage control. It is possible it saved me from finally getting home and finding burglar tracks.
I was approached in a mini-mart by a teenaged girl asking if I would contribute to her campaign for homecoming queen. I politely declined. About a year later – same mini-mart, same girl, same story.
Another popular story in Memphis is the “missionaries stranded in Memphis on their way to New Mexico” story. For awhile you couldn’t step out of your car without being approached by a stranded missionary. I eventually started telling them that God obviously wanted his missionaries to stay in Memphis
And thanks to you, that poor girl will never become Homecoming Queen. She’ll still be out there in her 70s, like Miss Havisham, her Homecoming hopes fading . . .
The one I really like is when the guy with the vaguely foreign accent comes up to you and asks you to help him find a particular address, and says he can pay you for your assistance, and flashes a wad of cash that’d choke a yak.
I live just outside Baltimore, where I encounter ‘stranded traveler’ scammers all the time. They often start by asking if they can get a ride somewhere, and the request for money comes as a compromise to the original goal, as if they’re settling for their second choice.
A more organized libretto is the ‘stranded church bus’ full of children – the bus is never in sight, but the requester has impressive ID proving he’s with the church. (FWIW, I once encountered an honest stranded church bus. I was staying at a cheap motel in my home state (West Virginia). A bus limped into the parking lot with a badly squealing engine belt. I walked over with a can of Belt-Ease, and offered to spray it on the belt. They were surprised (I’m white, and they were black), and a little hesitant, but very effusively grateful when it worked).
I had a real streak the other night: in one half-hour shopping trip in the suburb I live in, I got hit up four times. Two of them were simple beggars, although one had a sign reading “From West Virginia”, (maybe he was on some sort of tour?) The other two were stranded travelers. When the second one started her spiel, I rolled my eyes and asked, “OK, let’s have it, where are you trying to get to?” She turned around and walked away without even telling me.
But they all look like amateurs compared to this guy.
When I first moved to Baltimore, I was approached by a guy who needed $5 for a bus to get back to his wife and kids in the county. He told me that if I wanted, his pickup truck was a couple of blocks away and he had tools in it and he’d give me some nice tools if I gave him the $5.
He was also neat, and polite, and totally sincere.
It’s funny how the second before the bill leaves your hand you’re like 99% sure the guy is genuine, and the second after it leaves your hand you’re 100% sure you’ve been had.
I know a couple bartenders who get it a lot. . .guy comes in around midnight, “oh, I came up from Columbia with my friends and they took off and I need $20 for a cab to get home.”
The worst panhandling I ever saw though was a 5 year old kid trying to sell me a balloon for “school” or something. He was just standing in the middle of a sidewalk trying to sell me this one balloon he had. No literature. No adult with him. Nothing printed on the balloon. Nothing.
I asked him where his mom was and he told me – I’m dead serious – to go fuck myself. I’m sure it was some junkie’s kid.
I also paid a junkie to rake my leaves one day. He got halfway done and started walking off and I yelled at him and he told me he’d come back to finish.
I’m a lot more savvy now. When I got to B-more, they saw me coming.
I once ran into one of these street scammers in London town. She had gone the whole nine yards, with convincing “blood” on her face, nervous, panicked looks, and a story about how she needed money to catch a train/cab to her mother’s house to get away from her abusive boyfriend. We offered to call the police and she declined, but continued to ask for money anyway. She got none from me but someone I was with gave her £10.
The young girl whose boyfriend dumped her at Navy Pier so she needed CTA fare to get back home (I confonted her when she asked me for money again–same story, damn, girl, get better boyfriends ;)–and she just said “no, that wasn’t me”, looked aside and hastened off.) She was impeccably clean and expensively dressed so I kind of think she’s just getting extra spending money.
The woman who needs money to visit her son who just got back from the peace corp–apparently she hadn’t gotten enough since she was still there with the same story a week later.
The guy in a security uniform who shows his ID and says he works at the building he stands outside (the building changes) who lost his wallet and needs $2 for the El. Now really, if you work there wouldn’t your co-workers front you a couple bucks? You would prefer to hit up strangers on the street?
Well, call me a rube, but where’s the scam? OK, I understand the chances of any of that money landing in my hands are nill, but what’s two minutes of my time to give these guys directions? Do they take pleasure in watching people give street directions to people who don’t need them? Will they run of and say,
“Foo! We already knew how to get to 5th ave! Later, sucka!”
The only possibilty I see is if they want me to get in their car, or get into my car, which I think you’d have to be a pretty big idiot to do…which means I’d probably do it.
I like people begging money for food. If it’s outside a fast food place, I usually ignore them, but once inside I’ll buy them a hamburger or somethinig, and on my way out I’ll silently hand it to them. Some of the looks you get are priceless!
I have “Looking For Work” guy that stands at the bottom of the same expressway ramp every Saturday and Sunday. He’s holding a sign that says “Broke, Homeless, Looking For Work.” He’s never there during the week just weekends. I’ve also seen him in the little convenience store about a block away buying beer and cigarettes during the week. I’m starting to get a little suspicious. :dubious:
