Actually, now that I think about it, an ammendment to my post:
Many times I will say,
“Sorry, but good luck.”
In this case the “sorry” means “sorry, but I’m afraid I’m not going to approve your request for supplying funds at this time.”
Maybe the “Sorry” seems a bit more compassionate than just a “No.” It’s not like I’m appologizing for not giving them money, it’s more like I’m sorry they are in worse shape than I am!
It’s funny this should come up. I was approached by someone tonight after work, in the parking lot. His spiel was that he was stuck in Akron and needed a couple of quarters to make a phone call. He then asked me if I knew how late the buses ran. I gave him 2 quarters, and told him, I had no clue about the buses.
Unfortuneately for me, I saw him go into the " Crack House " next door.
I give people money Sometimes, sometimes I buy them lunch. It depends on the person and how they ask. Pushy people , people with Bad Stories, get Nuthin’. People who are wierd enough to be in movies, or are polite usually get sumptin’.
If I see you more then once, Nada.
If you are in a business parking lot Nuthin’.
BrattiAtti, Please, don’t give them McDonald’s apps., we have more " Not A Hope In Hell " applications than we can handle.
Tips? Well, don’t travel with me. I’m a notorious sucker for this kind of thing and I admit it. Lately, I’ve taken to just pretending I don’t hear, even though most of the time I don’t succeed and end up giving them a couple of bucks.
One time, some guy got twelve bucks out of me, but that’s because he looked really creepy, so I emptied out one of my pockets to get him to go away.
I have two rules.
The wallet doesn’t come out.
If I have any change, anyone who asks for it can have it.
Well, I think the OP’s characterization of all panhandlers as filthy, diseased crazy people is way more than a little bit unfair. My advice is to get rid of that worldview as soon as possible.
But I don’t give money to any panhandler anyway. If anybody asks me for money, I just say “Nope”.
What you need to do is cultivate the air of somebody who simply doesn’t give money away. It’s easier than it sounds, but difficult to get a handle on if you’re not used to it. It’s not simply that I won’t give them money when they ask me, it’s that no matter what approach they use I still won’t give them money. Sob stories, aggressiveness and even plain honestly will not coerce me into parting with my change. Once you’ve mastered that impression, people will leave you alone as you are a lost cause in their search for spare change.
So really, it’s just a matter of mastering “no” on all fronts.
For the record, I will talk to panhandlers, I just won’t give them money. Once I lectured a panhandler who approached me on the choice of his locations. I told him he would be much more successful if he just moved down the street to the stoplight intersection where all the gas stations were. He quickly lost interest in me. The fool, I knew the good locations for the panhandling money!
When people ask me I’ll usually tell them sorry I don’t have any spare change… I usually don’t cuz I make barely enough to pay for my stuff and give money away. I usually ignore the ones I can and if I can’t I listen to their story and tell them sorry afterward. I once had a guy come up to me and tell me a story about him and his son just getting up here and needing money for food… there were no kids within a 5 block radius. If he had a kid with him I probably would have taken them to get food, but that’s about it.
Lately there has been a lady selling those cards saying I’m deaf blah blah blah with sign language printed on the other side. She’s approached me more than once… the same woman everytime and everytime I hand the card back and say sorry.
There is also this one lady who wanders downtown babbling to herself. I’m pretty sure she should at least be on meds if not in a hospital somewhere. She always asks for quarters… only quarters. If anyone gives her anything else she throws it on the ground. I saw her toss a 5 on the ground once… I’ve even seen her throw away quarters. She scares me a bit not cuz she’s intimidating or anything just cuz she babbles in gibberish… it’s creepy.
As for the deaf beggars with the alphabet cards, being deaf myself, I will accept the card and look at it as if reading off of it and fingerspell: G-O-F-U-C-K-Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F-A-S-S-H-O-L-E. Then I give the card back. Works great.
Best advice? As the others have said, if you have no money to give or giving money is against your principles, just move on. They’re rarely going to be bothered to chase you halfway down the street. My favorite was one night, at about one in the morning, I was taking a bus to the southwest side of Chicago from the bus stop next to the Harold Washington Library on State Street. That part of the city is completely vacated during the night. A panhandler comes up to me and says “Got any spare change?” I chuckle and look at him and say “You think if I had any spare change I’d be taking the bus at f’in one in the morning?” We both laughed and he said “Awright, man, isss cool.”
That said, when I do have some extra change, I sometimes give it to 'em. Sometimes I offer to buy them a burger and sit down and half lunch and conversation with them. Sometimes I buy an extra burger and hand it out to some panhandler. I don’t particularly care. And the Street Wise (the newspaper the homeless in Chicago sell) I generally buy at least an issue a month when I’m in Chicago. As long as no long, sordid tale is involved, I’m more likely to give money. If you give me the “money for a bus” line, then you’re most likely to turn me off. Heck, if you said, “Man, I wanna get hammered tonight, can you spare some change?” I’m more likely to give you some cash.
If you play an instrument, you’re likely to get money from me. If you play a really bizarre panhandling instrument, (like a hammered dulcimer or solo upright bass or tuned glass bottles), then you’re practically guaranteed to get money from me. If you’re selling something, you’re more likely to get money from me.
My downtown parish has asked that the parishioners give out fast food coupons instead of money to the panhandlers that hang out around the church before and after Mass. I have a couple of times given people money for gas. One guy offered to come back and pay me back, but since I figured I had no hope to see the money again, I just told him to donate it to someone else who needed it. The thing is, after I gave him the few bucks I was driving home and saw him at the gas pump of a local gas station. Who knows? Maybe I did some good.
StG
Welcome to the deaf club cookeze…although that’s kinda cute, a lot of times I don’t think
they are really deaf. Those I have seen selling using those cards dress far better than any deaf people I know personally.
I don’t know why some people group the leaflet guys with the panhandlers. They’re doing a job, earning a few bucks. Maybe you don’t want to go to Flashdancers or get a suit at Moe Ginsberg’s, but you can just take the flyer and drop it in the trash can at the next corner. Don’t have to talk to the guy, but not be rude, either. Take the handoff in stride and keep going.
I don’t know why some people group the leaflet guys with the panhandlers. They’re doing a job, earning a few bucks. Maybe you don’t want to go to Flashdancers or get a suit at Moe Ginsberg’s, but you can just take the flyer and drop it in the trash can at the next corner. Don’t have to talk to the guy, but not be rude, either. Take the handoff in stride and keep going.
In a few cases, they are in the same group. There was a guy who haunted a path frequented by local college students. He’d hand out concert flyers he got for free at a nearby record store (which anyone could do), and and insist repeatedly for you to take one (“It’s okay, really. Here.”). If you actually accepted a flyer, then he’d start insisting you give him a dollar for “helping you out”. Some students were apparently intimidated by this (occasional muggings on that same path didn’t help), and he racked up complaints pretty quickly with both campus and local police.
ok, ** peasea **. I’ve seen a lot of the leaflet guys in Manhattan, but they and the panhandlers were separate. Several of the leaflet guys even wear vests and the like from the place they work for. I never get the aggressive panhandlers, either.
I’m in the “sorry,” smile, shake my head, move on crowd. Direct eyecontact and two syllables don’t cost me much, and it’s really, really rare that anyone pushes the issue with me.
My favorite panhandler I’ve dealt with is the one that shouted at me from teh sidewalk. “Hey!” he shouted. “I want a burrito!”
He was right next to Cosmic Cantina, best burrito shop in Durham, and I was hungry too, so I got a burrito for each of us. Guess I was in a good mood.
Mmm, Cosmic Cantina…
Daniel
Ugh! Agressive panhandlers are very high on the list of reasons I’m glad I left New York. I hate to say that there isn’t one magic way of dealing with them because you never know what they’re going to do. Walking by fast was always my favorite, but I was with someone once who got really harrassed by the panhandler for doing that. I saw a woman on the subway pretend she was asleep and the panhandler stood there trying to wake her up. Meanwhile, he was notorious for his bullshit story. Every day practically he had just been released from jail that very day and was thrown out of his house and was starting a job on Monday. He should have paid US for listening to the same script every evening.
The deaf people with the cards thing reminds me of a phenomenon surrounding them - everyone in the subway car would go silent when those folks came around. Weird. I hated that they would have the nerve to place those cards on people’s knees and would never, ever give.
If people had kids with them - kids that you could actually see - I would always give.
I never bothered to give food because there were too many times that I would see panhandlers accept the food, but continue to beg, claiming that they were hungry. Eat the food and you won’t be hungry, genius.
When I worked at South Station, we were flooded by beggers. None of them seemed to understand that I just couldnt give them free food because they were poor. If we gave in and fed one, the next day we had three more who claimed that we gave his friend food, so he should get some too. I was the bitch of South Statipn because i got bored with everyone’s crap very quickly, and just made everyone pay. I swear, if I ever go back there again, they’re all gonna gang up on me and jump me in the subway.
I ignore them. If they get pushy, I get rude.
We should all go to our local propriator of crack and buy a dozen or so rocks, then when they spin their tale we could listen with feigned heartfelt concern, then give them a rock, cause hey, that’s what they really want, we’d just be cutting out the middle man.
Or we could just realize that the rock is exactly what they want (or maybe heroin, or some Mad Dog 20/20), which makes it that much easier to ignore them
On an unrelated note, I saw three punks in Times Square last week that had a sign that said “3 young porn stars out of work, please help” That one made me laugh, so I tossed in some change. Hey, I was enabling a drug habbit sure, but at least they came up with a bullshit story that had some entertainment value. I hope they get that audition.
The approach that has worked 100% for me* is a simple “Not today, sorry.”
I guess they let things drop on the off chance that they will someday bump into me when I’m in a generous mood. And, hey, once I have a job and am relatively (read: credit card) debt free, I probably will be. (At least I was last time I had a job and no CC debt, but I digress.)