It’s possible the guy recognised the woman as a scammer too.
“Tenderloin” indeed.
What more could I say than, “what a dick.” I have no problem giving money to panhandlers. I don’t care what they do with it, as long as they don’t give me the fucking “I’m seven dollars short for the Greyhound” line.
(Although, I guess ironically and perhaps karmically, I once did end up about $10 short for a Greyhound in LA, trying to head back to Chicago. I just could not bring myself to ask around for the money, because 99% of the time that line is pure BS. Ended up calling my folks who had to go down to the local Greyhound station [they couldn’t do it over the phone] to pay for my return.)
Which, after you left, the “homeless” guy split with the eye-rolling “stranger,” as both of them prepared to run their grift on the next set of pigeons…
It’s about fucking compassion. Whether one chooses to give to panhandlers can be argued either way.
But to fucking tease like that - to raise hopes just for the pleasure of dashing them?
The OP is too kind to the jerk being Pitted. That is absolutely loathsome behavior.
I’d bet the pogrocket bastard owns all the Bum Fights videos, too. Since, obviously, homeless people are here for him to fuck with.
I play disc golf at a park that has a pretty steady bum population, and there’s this one guy who always trolls the parking lot. He uses the same line every time (“Excuse me, sir. I’m from outta town. Car trouble. $3 for gas, so I can get home to my wife and kids. Yadda yadda yadda.”) I used to pass him some change, but now I just tell him, “Sorry. I don’t have anything.” Mostly, this is true. I don’t usually carry cash. But partly, it’s frustration.
Don’t scam me. Don’t lie to me. Don’t bullshit me. And besides, I’m here ALL THE TIME. Do you not remember me from yesterday, when you asked me for a handout? Or the day before? Or the twenty times before that? Why do you have to concoct a crap story? Why can’t you just walk over and, since we obviously are familiar with each other, call me by name, chat a sec, and ask if I can spare anything for you? If you’d show a shred of honesty (or recollection), I’d make sure to have some change in my car for you.
Sorry. [/hijack]
That’s pretty tasteless. I woulda waved a hundred.
[sup]Just a joke, people! Put the pitchforks down…[/sup]
Or, like Timothy Price in American Psycho, you could have asked the woman if she took American Express.
Woulda served him right if she’d have snatched it out of his hand and run like hell.
Of course, in the wrong place, waving money like that would mean an involuntary trip down the next dark alley.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit. There’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few years, which is that I’m as likely surrounded by as many total assholes as I am genuinely kind people. They’re really all around, and it’s only through my limited interaction with them that I don’t have the benefit of observing all sorts of distasteful attitudes and actions.
And, because there are zero consequences to being a jerk to strangers, the behavior is almost tacitly encouraged.
Sometimes I feel like we really ought to allow people to punch a guy for being a jerk. Or, some idiot takes four spots for his/her ultra-expensive car? Key it! Teach them how to behave and interact as an equal with all members of their community.
sigh
Yeah. If this story had been set in Baltimore, I’m sure the OP would have said a “white couple” or “black couple” so’s he wouldn’t worry about confusing people.
I’m pleased to hear you spoke out. With any luck he’ll think about you the next time he feels the need to be so hateful. I can’t believe he would do such a thing in front of his wife or girlfriend. He sounds like a pretty piss poor specimen of a man.
DLuxN8R-13, my hat is off to you! That was pretty awesome of you (so few of us, I’m afraid, would have the courage to do what you did), so you ought to be proud of yourself.
Yeah, I feel ya, especially that part about being surrounded by assholes. Makes me wish that I believed in divine retribution.
That’s pretty much what I’m thinking, too. This is obviously a guy who has never gone hungry in his life. Good for you for calling him on it, DLux. I usually protest in Canadian fashion (mutter under my breath and wait for someone else to say something).
I know, but it’s an irrelevant detail. They may have been left handed, brown eyed, and bald, but we don’t need to know this. You know that if you substituted any other description, white, black, gay, fat, Latino, or whatever someone would rightly point out that characterising all fat, black, gay Latinos as being cruel to homeless people was innacurate at the least, and possibly offensive.
The fact that they were nicely dressed and out for a evening of club hopping is relevent, inasmuch as it demonstrated that they had disposable income, but their sexual orientation is not.
I agree with rigs’s comment that karma should come back and bite him.
Myself, I’d like to think I’d have given her a $20, if for no other reason than to make the point that we’re not all assholes.
How about their gender? If he’d said, “A man and a woman,” would you be raising the same objections?
I’ve never seen the kind of thing the OP saw, but I’m pissed off READING about it, I can’t imagine what would happen to the assclown if I’d actually SEEN it. I imagine I’d be posting from the prison library.
What a fucking pig - I hope he was hit by a car once he turned the corner.
There comes a point where removing information because it’s “irrelevant” or because there are overly sensitive people just aching for a reason to be offended who might be reading is counter-productive and/or just plain wrong.
Please folks, tell me everything. Tell me she walked with limp, spoke with a lisp and had a unibrow. Tell me he was wearing cheap slacks and a counterfeit Rolex. Tell me they were walking east on main at 6:43pm with the sun over his left shoulder, and that it was mostly cloudy with light winds out of the north, and two robins were fighting a squirrel in a nearby tree.
Hell, embellish your tale with fantastic elements if it pleases you! Tell me that his girlfriend had the head of a goat and brayed like a donkey at his joke. Tell me that you think he had cloven hooves in his $500 shoes. Tell me the twenty had cocaine residue on it and the man had white powder under his nose.
More importantly,
Please folks, get the fuck over yourselves with these critiques of the minutae.