There is also the fact that one person’s legit entitlement, is another person’s outrageous demand.
Hell, kids in my neighborhood sometimes just say “Gimme Dollar!” And they don’t stop at once.
I usually shudder later on thinking about why this is allowed.
I’m waiting for the first Doper to hit the OP up for a quarter on the basis that they are someone’s kid after all. :smack:
That’s my observation as well, and I don’t see any reason to shame them about not having money. It’s not like that’s going to magically give them the ability to earn money or their parents (if they have any) an increased cashflow to gift them some.
I would go for the firm middle- Say no with no apologies but no lecturing about something they have no ability to deal with. They are fucking children, and if their parents are poor and/or not great parents, not much they can do about it themselves.
I’ve got a kinfolk who has done this sort of thing for pretty-much his whole life, and seems, at least in part, to have survived by doing so. He’s 70+ now and still at it.
He did a tract about Cthulhu? Is it on line? Can you link? This I’ve gotta see.
ETA: Really? Okay, I just googled that for me. What I’m finding is a lot of Chick Track style parodies of Chick Tracts, about Cthulhu.
Does your store have a “no begging” or “no panhandling” policy?
The public vending machines in our library are operated by the cafe I work for, and are at the other end of the building.
You wouldn’t believe how many budding con artists, (think early grade school), come in to the cafe and want a dollar, claiming to have lost their money in the machines. Our policy is to tell the brat that they will be met at the machine after the security cameras confirm they actually put money in the machine. “Uh, what cameras?” they reply. “The two cameras that show the machines.” Nine times out of ten the kid never shows up at the machine. They all think they’ve though up some brilliant scam, not realizing they aren’t even the thousandth to have thought of it.
Every time we go to the Ci Ci’s or Stevie B’s there will be children asking for tokens or tickets. Every single time. They’re usually between 6 and 10, and they’ll hit up my little girl before they’ll ask an adult. Where are the parents? I do not know. They are not hanging around the games with their children like I am.
Thank you for a lot of interesting answers and things to think about. You guys were busy while I was gone!! 
Forgive me if I post after myself, but I have things to say (and more questions,) so I’m going to make a couple of replies, in order to think about the posts in the order the collective made them.
I was running a bit behind to go to work, and didn’t get a chance to say; this actually is not a lie. I usually do not have any money on me. My paychecks are direct deposited, and I tend to live on my credit card. I pay that bill via cell phone, and rarely go to the bank at all. The first time I was asked, I was so taken aback, I just popped out the first thing I thought, which was “I don’t have any money.” It worked, and path of least resistance…
After a bit, it bothered me that this was just so wrong in my eyes, I did say something along the lines of “No, I don’t have any quarters, but when you get older you’ll have a job and your own money.” Until I waited on the mother in her pajama pants. Looked up at the screen as she paid with her EBT (foodstamps) card. And she gave me a dirty look. They pay me to be nice to people, so I dropped that. (Tact, I must use tact. :rolleyes: )
Maybe there is something to the theories that a lot of times these children come from low-income families.
Thudlow Boink, you may also be on to something here. A co-worker at my other job has teenage twin girls, and they are involved in everything. She is always bringing flyers/pamphlets/catalogs to work, selling stuff to fund cheerleading uniforms, class trips, band instruments…whatever. So maybe the kids see this as natural. But the kids asking me are SO young, are children between 4-12 years expected to sell things, too?
This answer just confuses me. 
…And then what?
No, there is nothing like that near us.
You may have been the first one to notice.*** I*** didn’t notice!! :eek:
I log in, then forget my username. In my head, I just post as “me.”
What makes this extra funny is that I have also been contemplating starting a thread asking for advice/opinions about my boyfriend’s son.
He’s 21 years old, and hasn’t had a job in about a year and a half to two years. He has NO interest in finding a job. He’s fine with letting his mother support him, forever. I’ve tried encouraging him to get a job, asking why he won’t go find a job, and I got the answer, “Jobs just don’t work for me. I’ve had three of them, (Count them folks, THREE of them! :rolleyes: ) … and it just doesn’t work out.”
Because it is what I ask myself, I was going to title the thread, “Why won’t this child get a job?” :smack:
As I write this, I can’t help but think, does that have something to do with that “sense of entitlement” ?
It doesn’t sound like entitlement to me. It sounds like lack of requirement. As in, his mother isn’t going to require him to get a job, so he won’t.
Try pointing out to him if he doesn’t learn to hold a job, earn pay and support himself, he’ll always be his Mama’s boy. Each year he puts off developing these skills, it will become harder and more unlikely that he’ll recover. He’ll never get to a life of independence, and is unlikely to ever build a happy partnership with a mate, without these basic skills. The achievements his mates will make, will never be his, even the small victories. (Like a first apt, first car, first home, all attained independently!)
Each year his mates will be experiencing the real world while he will become ever more distant from his peer group in life experience. Basically he is allowing himself to be enslaved. They are relying on his own teenaged laziness to lead him into a circumstance he’ll find nearly impossible to reverse after but a few short years. Like all the worst tricks in life, it starts out looking like a pretty sweet deal. By the time you figure out it’s really not, you’re half way to being fully crippled/enslaved by it.
Kids in this circumstance deserve a lot is sympathy it’s not an easy enslavement to resist I suspect!
At my gf’s request I’ve been cleaning up my act a bit. I used to tell beggar kids “Fuck off”. Now I use “bugger off” which is classier and has a certain European feel to it.
I’ll occasionally give adult beggars a few bucks with the caveat that they MUST use it to get high on(crack is the drug of choice for street beggars around here, no heroin, no meth). The caveat is uneeded, I’ve seen them toss a expensive roti meal with sides on the ground when someone gave it to them, I bagged it for my dogs at home.
I will never EVER give money to a woman with a child, these kids are props and I have watched them hand off cash to their professional vagrant pimp. A woman begging with baby will go and hand her haul to a young man. Those kids are being HURT by begging.
I think that, when the parents don’t respond until you say something, the parents may be okay with it. They know that what their kid is doing is rude, but they are hoping you’ll give them money.
Or, if I want to be more charitable, they’ve learned to tune their kids out, and only notice that they’ve asked you after you respond.
There is subsidized housing close to the bar I frequent. Regulars stop in once or twice a day to pick up two sixpacks of cheap beer. During extremely cold weather I’ve offered free rides home for these people, calling my service “Beers on Wheels”. 
When I lived in nyc, my policy was that if someone asked for food or money for food, and I happened to have some food with me, I offered it to them. About half the time, it was eagerly accepted. The other half, the beggar was annoyed that I messed up his act.
But I gave out bagels, strawberries, leftover Chinese, and oranges to people who were happy to take them, and often consumed them on the spot.
(Then, there was the guy who hung out in front of the corner grocery store and begged for groceries. His kids preferred sweet cereal. He only begged at the end of the month, and I think he really was feeding his children.)
A friend and I once asked a random adult for money for ice cream, but this was before I really understood how money worked. I think I was past the “one money, two money, three” stage but maybe still very excited when, after paying for something, the store employee would sometimes give you money.
My wife told me about age 11 an older girl told her how just ask men for things and you’ll get them. So she and her friends did, and sometimes got it! from street food to free rides.
Yes she eventually realized why men would provide it, and she was horrified, and some peers were like who cared.
Her mom was pissed as hell when she told her, it is now a funny story.
How did this “entitlement culture” start?
I have known people that have spoiled their kids rotten, because they “went through a lot when we got divorced…” “S/he was raised without a father, so I gave them whatever they wanted.” So you turned them into a monster that screams and hollers when they don’t get what they want? You let them pout you into submission?
While bartending, one guy told me that his electricity was going to be turned off, because he bought his son a video game with the money for the bill. I told him he was crazy, WTF?! When he told his son “No,” the boy screamed that he hated him, so he bought the game. Sounds to me like the kid was already “playing the game.” :rolleyes: And I know he’s not the only one. Just about everyone I know has a story of a situation like that.
Was that the start of it? A factor in the start of it?
Hey!! I’m the Child asking questions here!! :mad:
Everybody gimme a quarter!! 
Yes, and I’ve had to enforce it with adults when they’ve tried. Do you think me mentioning it to the child and/or parent would make a difference? I think I’d eventually get fired for being rude to customers. I picture hordes of spiteful parents calling the store with complaints, even if they just made something up!