I’m in Ocala Florida tonite checking into my hotel when this neck in a beat up old car pulls up next to me.
He gets out of his car and is very polite. He apologizes for his dirty, disheveled appearence, and makes sure to point out how dirty his jeans are. He then gives me this story about how he is almost out of gas, needs to get to Bradenton, and just needs some money so he can get some gas and get there. I told him sorry pal, but I dont have cash on me. He politely says thank you anyway then drives off. I told the hotel clerk about this guy and she said “Oh, the guy in the blue car?” and calls the fuzz, which tells me that the guy is a pro at this.
NOW . . about 1 or 2 years earlier in THE EXACT SAME TOWN . . a couple pulls up to me in a restaurant parking lot, looking all poor and disheveled, in a beat up car, and tells me that they were robbed, and they need gas money so that they could go home. I give them the same story, they are very polite and go on their way.
I KNOW that this has GOT to be a scam. Is this a gang? There’s got to me more to this than just getting a few bucks off some naive Yankee tourist for gas money.
I doubt there’s a gang involved, but the panhandlers’ stories are quite often very similar as is their polite demeanor.
A few years ago I began to wonder if there was some Mississippi medical center I hadn’t heard of, what with all the folks I was running into who just needed a couple of bucks more to get their bus ticket to Tupelo to see their mom one more time before she died.
Professional panhandlers share stories and experiences (in El Paso they do some of this on the Sun Metro buses as they travel to their street corners).
What works spreads fast.
I’ve encountered it in Alabama, once at a gas station and once right in front of my home. I didn’t give them money either time. It felt like a scam to me.
Another time, I encountered a woman in front of a liquor store who told me she needed to buy PGA because her baby had swallowed rubbing alcohol. According to a friend of mine, this is an actual treatment. To prevent methanol poisoning, you plug up all your booze receptors with ethanol – or something along those lines.
Anything that asks for money for a specific purpose is a better approach than simply asking for money.
I buy McDonald’s gift certificates and keep them in my glove compartment. When I’m at a red light and one of those, “Homeless, Hungry, Will Work For Food” people comes along, I offer them Mickey D’s. Most take it; a few have angrily turned it down. I figure it’s not the perfect solution… but if they are hungry, this guarantees they can eat. And it will be difficult to turn it into booze or crack.
You can apply this same approach for whatever they ask, if you’re so inclined. I got hit up for Metro fare outside MCI Arena last week after a Caps game… “I need to get back home; can’t you please help?” I told him I’d walk him down to the Farecard machines and buy him a Farecard… he declined.
So they need gas? Offer to buy 'em a few gallons of gas. But don’t hand over money.
True, Mr. Harvard. We prefer the term “Sanitation challenged European-Americans”.
I used to occasionally travel to Baltimore on business. Around the Inner Harbor area one cannot go 30 feet without being hit up by very aggressive panhandlers. Once, after eating dinner, I had a half a pizza left over. I asked the wait-person to box it for me. The plan was to give the pizza to a panhandler. Suffice to say I had a difficult time finding one who would take the food. Seems to be more of a cash only panhandling area.
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik
I once, on a street corner in Atlanta while waiting for a bus, watched the following exchange.
A man was asking cars stopped at the red light for money because “he hadn’t eaten in several days”. (He had hit me up earlier but, being a college student at the time, I really didn’t have any myself.)
One woman in a car handed over a McDonalds bag. After the car drove away the man walked to a trash can, tossed the bag in (unopened) and went back to working the cars.
OK, McDonalds isn’t the best in the world, but someone who “hadn’t eaten in several days” should be happy for some fries.
Sad, given that some of these people are probably telling the truth, but I assume all of them are scams now.
“Drink your coffee! Remember, there are people sleeping in China.”
They had a scam like that here. The police were alerting the public to not give them any money. It’s sad that you would have to be this much on alert but what can you do?
I hate panhandlers. Personally, I respond to any attempt to ask for cash in German. When you say to some bum " Ich spreche kein Englisch", they just go away. Makes me feel good to scam THEM for a change ! Seattle is the worst for beggers IMHO.
I had half of a large sandwich left over as I was going back to my office from a deli. I passed a panhandler with a cardboard sign asking for money for food. I offered him either my sandwich, or if he didn’t like corned beef, I could give him a couple of bucks. He looked at the sandwich, then at the proffered $2, repeatedly without saying anything. He didn’t try to take either, so I shrugged and went on my way. Back at my office, I realized my mistake:
Beggars can’t be choosers!
What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.
This one kid came up to me saying that he and his girlfriend (standing nearby, looking appropriately frightened) had lost their train tickets back to Butthole, Illinois and needed money. Evidently, the girl had been asked for a cigarette by yet another street person and since there was just one left in the pack, she gave the whole thing to him, not knowing that the boyfriend had put the train tickets inside. Brilliant, huh? I told him that I didn’t have any money, and he started yelling at me. “I find that very hard to believe! Nobody around here has any money?” I replied, “Well, you and I make two, don’t we?”
This other guy came up to me, looking like hell, hand already outstretched, and said, “Listen, I’m not one of these bums out here asking for money…”
Right.
In downtown Chicago a woman approached me and asked for train fare explaining that she had lost her purse, I told her I had no money (which was true) and continued on my way.
The next day at the same spot the same woman gave me the same story. I told her she already asked me Yesterday…that stopped her in her tracks.
Because of this I probably will never believe another story like this again, although I’m sure, sometimes these people are telling the truth.
A few years ago in Boston, the mayor decided to solve the begging problem-the city would sell you chits, which you could give to the beggars 9so they wouldn’t spend the cash on crack or booze). Well guess what? A market for these chits instantly sprang up! Liquor store ownwers would reddem them for half their cash value! So the bums still were able to get plastered!
“Evidently, the girl had been asked for a cigarette by yet another street person and
since there was just one left in the pack, she gave the whole thing to him, not knowing that the boyfriend had put the train tickets inside. Brilliant, huh?”
They could at least have come up with a story within the realm of possibility! Amtrak tickets are the same size as standard airline tickets (so travel agents can sell them) – huge compared to a pack of cigarettes. If you wanted to hide train tickets, you would have to use a carton of cigarettes. (^:
My father’s approach to panhandlers is hilarious: when he sees that one is about to hit him up for money, he asks the beggar for money instead. Confuses the hell out of them every time!
I met this one guy in the Loop in St. Louis. He claimed it was his birthday, and he was appropriately plastered. He probably wasn’t a street person, but he certainly wasn’t well off. Anyway, he’s asking random people for money so he can get drunker. I remember one guy he asks “Hey, you got a dollar?”, the guy says no. Now this panhandler has had some success, he has two dollars at the moment. He says, “Well if you ain’t got a single dollar, you can have one of mine!” The guy just hurries off. I thought it was kind of funny.
Two anecdotes.
[ul][li]On the train home one day, I realized I had spent my last dime (literally) on lunch that day, and then remembered I didn’t have my car at the train station but needed to call my mom. I asked some well heeled folks for $.20 to make a phone call and got a quarter. I think because I had a specific low dollar amount my story was believable - i.e. I was done begging once I had the phone call money.[/li][li]Coming out of a TGIF’s in San Francisco one evening, my friend had most of her burger left. As we passed the not-too-grubby looking guy with the ‘need food money’ sign, we offered him the burger, and he gladly accepted without hesitation. We saw him stuffing the last of the burger into his overflowing mouth as we were walking away. Either he really was hungry, or he is a trained bulimic using this as a tool[/li][/ul]
That’s all. No real helpful info, sorry.
My anecdote:
I was walking from campus to my apartment, through a parking lot when a pair of middle-aged men stopped me and told me they were trying to get to Kokomo, Indiana. I told them I didn’t have any idea how to get there(we were in Indiana). They told me that that wasn’t what they wanted, they just lacked three dollars of the bus fare needed to get back. It sounded to me like they took the bus from Kokomo to where I was WITHOUT bring enough money to get them back. Not like they lost it, or were robbed, just that they didn’t have enough money to begin with. No sympathy from me for that. Plus, I couldn’t help wondering whether the reason they claimed to be $3 from the total needed was because they thought someone would be more likely to give them the last $3 than the first $3. Suffice it to say that I felt a little bad about my lack of trust, if they were sincere, but not bad enough to give them the $3(assuming I had that much, which is NOT a good idea.)