As a small business owner you have that option, and I definitely applaud you for giving others a chance. McDonalds is not a small business, though, and they don’t let employees get away with things like that. For example, shelters up in Seattle used to let the clientele use their address and phone number for references. The local businesses quickly caught on and roundfiled any apps that used those. I tried to fill out apps using the shelter’s info and I was stopped midway through filling out the form by the McDonald’s manager that was in the room with me. Pretty much the same thing happened at a Wal-Mart and a Burger King. The problem is that they need to call you in all times, and the only time you have access to the shelter’s phone is when you are there…and one of the rules of most shelters is that once you accepted into the shelter you are locked in until the morning kick-out.
Life is hard on the street. I could die or be killed tonight as I sleep.
"
I’m gonna spend it on something that will make me very happy, because quite possibly I won’t ever have any other chances to.
that’s such an empty statement it’s borderline meaningless. as in, Underpants Gnomes empty.
and no, nobody is “moving the goalposts.” They’re asking you to explain how having nothing but $50 is going to be sufficient to make you not-homeless and not-destitute. 'cos “I have $50 and I’m not crazy” doesn’t cut it.
you seem to be one of those people who think everyone always has every possible opportunity equally available at any time.
If you can find an all-you-can-eat buffet, all the better.
That’s easy. I’d just slide that wad over to my father, because he is like one of the top brokers in the State.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying here. The direct deposit form doesn’t go to the bank, the company just uses it to input the bank routing numbers and account number. What address has to “match” at a bank?
Any statement is empty if you don’t read it.
See above. If you can cut and paste where I said it would be sufficient, you would have a point. Since you can’t, you don’t.
And you seem to be one of those people who don’t read for comprehension.
You did.
Do you not remember writing that?
I am kind of used to y’all not reading what I wrote, but when you don’t read what you wrote it gets kind of weird.
Regards,
Shodan
The part in quotes is what I wrote about what happens to people after they become homeless. If you dispute what I actually wrote, tell me why…and while you’re at it, could you explain what would cause you to become homeless in the first place if you have friends, family, skills, and good mental and physical health in the first place? You saying what you would do if you were homeless, while also describing your personal situation as stated above leads one to believe that it doesn’t really matter what you would do with that 50 dollars because, claim of homelessness aside, you don’t really need it.
You’re perhaps right about chronic homelessness, but medium-term homelessness can happen to lots of people that have friends, family, skills, etc. The biggest homelessness cause is divorce. One partner has the home or lease in their name and kicks the other out, in many areas, finding affordable housing is essentially impossible especially if the partner being kicked out has a lower paying job and is relying upon their partner for the bulk of their expenses. Because we are more transient as a society, they could be thousands of miles from their families, but need to stay in the state for custody reasons or to finalize their divorce. And while sometimes our friends are kind and let us crash on their couch, sometimes our friends aren’t as close as we thought.
Also, when you’re close to the line, it doesn’t take much to push you over. There are lots of people that are eking out a living making 15 bucks an hour, but their car breaks down, they miss work a couple of days and lose their job and suddenly rent comes due, getting a new job takes longer than they thought and they find themselves on the street.
Homelessness in the US is very, very common unfortunately. A 1994 study out of Columbia saw that 15% of adults in the US had been homeless at some point. Roughly 2/3 of those for longer than a month. The US has very little social safety net and people fall through it all the time.
I’d hail a cab to take me to Domino’s. I’d get two large pepperoni and one ham-and-cheese pizzas. And maybe some fries and wings.
Wash my clothes at the laundromat. Spend the rest on food.
Obviously, it’s not like finding $50 on the sidewalk is going to solve your homelessness problem. Even if you’re homeless because you were exactly $50 short on rent last month so you got evicted, that $50 isn’t going to solve your problem NOW, like it would have last month.
And of course if your plan for keeping a roof over your head requires finding an extra $50 on the sidewalk every month, and if you don’t find it you’re on the streets, well, maybe being $50 short of cash every month isn’t your biggest problem.
Your biggest problem is instead X. Whatever X is, I don’t know. But if you’re that close to the edge that $50 a month results in either disaster or happiness, then maybe put forth a bit more effort each month to put yourself in the happiness column. And if you’re so tapped out that putting in that effort to get an extra $50 is just impossible, you’re not on the knife edge of success or failure, you’re tipped way way way over on the failure side. It’s like the old quote about how people go broke: gradually and then suddenly.
If you’re living in a cardboard box under an overpass, you might as well spend that money on one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer, because changing your situation depends on factors outside your control, and those factors don’t include “getting an extra $50”.
With $50 I would go to goodwill and buy a change of clothes. then to a Church or social service for basic supplies such as soap and shave razor. Then on to a hardware store for a pole squeegee and a bucket. I’d then go to a strip mall and offer to wash windows for whatever number gets me business. I’d guess I could make $100 day going from strip mall to strip mall.
After a couple of days of that I’d go to Walmart and get a $50 tent and a $5 pillow. repeat until tent is replaced by apartment. Once in an apartment I’d hire on with electricians or other trade workers who need cheap labor.
Or why not just call your current boss and go back to work at your current job? Why wash windows when you could be selling insurance or whatever you do for a living? I mean in this hypothetical you’re only homeless because a mischievous leprechaun waved his magic wand and poof you were dressed in rags under a bridge. So why not just take a shower and show up to work tomorrow and say you were mugged and lost your badge.
Sure it sucks to have your savings and home equity wiped out, but people have lost everything in the financial crisis and spent years building there retirement back. So it’s just a minor setback. So since it’s so easy, why can’t those filthy diseased real-life homeless animals do what would be so easy for you?
How many car windows do you think you’d have to squeegee per day to earn $100? How many days can you go back to the same strip mall before someone call the cops to make you move along?
Because Pizza?
Clearly you’ve already thrown them under the bus and have determined they’re diseased real-life homeless animals who can’t do the simplest of jobs.
I could build a house from scratch if I had to. I learned those skills while in grade school. I chose a simpler start up plan for the money to show that it’s possible to earn money on a basic level and build it to a point where it can leverage into better jobs.
none. I didn’t say car windows. I said strip malls.
True- I assumed the windows in question were car windows.
My question is the same. How many windows do you think the strip mall renters are going to pay you to do, and how much per window? And where are you going on day 2? Back to the same strip mall? Ride the bus from mall to mall?
the amount of money I would charge is what people are willing to pay. When you have no money then any money is an improvement. As you improve your finances you charge what you’ve learned is the optimal amount to maximize your time. I would go from strip mall to strip mall without repeating them. They’re everywhere and easily accessed by bus.
I’ve never been homeless but I’ve lost jobs before and had to take on jobs such as landscaping or lawn mowing where I used the homeowners’s tools. It’s very common for people in a neighborhood to seek you out if you do good work.
Yeah, as I understand it, professional window cleaning firms make good money on contracts with strip malls. Why would the owners of strip mall properties shell out extra money on unnecessary window cleaning by random drifters with no supervisors, no references and no insurance?
It’s weird how many advocates of “bootstrap” approaches to getting out of poverty seem to imagine that poor people live in some kind of Horatio Alger freelance economy where jobs that reliably pay enough to live on frugally are growing on every bush. Modern developed societies have deliberately pushed that kind of casual entrepreneurship out of legitimate business activity.
How homeless people earn substantial amounts of money in real life is generally through illegal activities like selling drugs or sex. There are legal activities like collecting and redeeming recyclables that a number of homeless people work pretty hard at, but they’re not regularly making anything like $100 per day.
How many strip malls do you think exist in a given urban area? How long do you think it takes to get from one to another by bus, and how many trips to different malls would you have to make to routinely earn something like $100 per day? And again, why do you think that strip mall property owners have any interest in hiring random homeless people rather than window cleaning services?
Yeah, if you’re not homeless and live in a community with a network of acquaintance where people know where and how to find you, it’s a lot easier to get a word-of-mouth customer base. That’s not really relevant to the experience of most actual homeless people.