Has anyone else been panhandled at a gas station?

Boston has “Registered” street performers. You have to audition to become a registered performer. The ones you see at the T-stops (aka subway) are NOT registered. They range from extremely BAD to extremely GOOD. Most are in the bad crowd. So it was nice to hear this one performer at this T-stop I use when I go into Boston who was really excellent.

I was driving to the gas station, and saw a man just standing around across the street. Paying no attention, I proceeded to my task. With at least 6 other customers at pumps, I look up and see this guy approaching me, and he asks for money. I say no, that I’m on my way out of state for surgery and I need it for myself!(It was true) He doesn’t ask anyone else and goes back across the street…it was a little creepy

As mentioned, happens everywhere and sometimes I get caught at a weak moment. Sometimes, the stories are quite entertaining. Most of the time you can easily tell it’s not going for food or gas.

There was one time I was standing in line at the grocery store and this old man and his wife were ahead of me checking out. They didn’t have enough money to buy all of their meager rations and were quietly discussing what to put back. They were obviously from the age where it would be embarassing to ask for help. I couldn’t stand the idea of these people not being able to afford a few bananas and some vegetables but was unsure how to handle it so they wouldn’t be even more embarassed. I motioned to the checker that I would pay for everything and she told them it’s OK it’s all taken care of. They looked bewildered at first and when the guy looked at me I saw he had a WWII veterans hat. So I pointed at his hat and told him it was the least I could do for someone that made it possible for me to be safe and comfortable.

Seriously, I was the one that felt embarassed and ashamed that these people who were obviously humble, hard working, honest folks and they couldn’t even afford to buy enough food for themselves in their golden years. Going hungry should not be one of the problems people face in this country…

TT, your kind action is humbling to us all. God bless you.

+1 for @mountainbike. @TT…you have a heart of pure gold. I wish everyone did.

We were on vacation somewhere once and I was out with both my kids (wife stayed in the hotel to rest). A homeless guy asked for food for money, so I invited him inside the McDonald’s and bought him something along with food for the 3 of us. We got talking, he saw my camera; turns out he is a good photographer, took a few nice shots from me and the kids during sunset and showed me a few tricks on my camera. Schizophrenia is a bad disease and we do not have much resources for this unlucky folks and their families are fed up too.

Well worth the lunch he got. And even more precious was the experience for my kids which the usual reaction would be running away.

I was at a conference in Chicago, and had a $5 bill in my pocket for someone in need. There was a guy sitting on the corner, head down, so I tossed it in his bucket. Went up about 2 blocks and decided to people watch for a bit, I hear sirens, and a couple of ambulances pull up on the corner where this guy was, I could not tell what was happening, but hope I did not give him a heart attack. So later in the evening, or more correctly early in the morning I’m doing a pub crawl, and there is a guy in a wheelchair asking for $5 to get home. He conveys to me he has collected enough money to get home, wants to go home, but the guy rolling the wheelchair won’t let him go home, as he was taking all the money. so I walked on, a block away I guy on a bike asks for a few bucks, tough enough looking guy, I say if you’ll do me a favor, he says sure, so I point out the guy in the wheelchair and say he wants to go home but his bud might wants him to stay and is taking the money people are giving to him, Here is 10, 5 so he can get home and 5 for you if you can make it happen. He says yeah I’ll do that, did not stick around to see the results.

There are probably thousands of people asking for money in the Los Angeles area.

One time I noticed a guy outside a 7-11 who was talking to himself and obviously mentally challenged. Interestingly enough, even though he looked homeless, he wasn’t actually approaching anybody to ask for money. I gave him $5 on my out.

Another time my boss and I were eating burgers in some cheap restaurant. A young guy approached us and asked for money, but he acted like a dope fiend. We told him “No” in a very firm tone of voice.

A guy with toothpick legs in a wheelchair asked me for money at my local gas station. I think his cap said Navy, or some such thing, and he looked old enough to be a Vietnam vet. I judged that he really wasn’t capable of walking . . . you can’t fake toothpick legs and a 110 pound body. So I gave him $5

A few years ago, I pulled up to the local supermarket. I stayed in the car, because I wanted to finish listening to the radio show. Anyways, some crazy looking lady startled me by knocking very hard on my window. She mumbled something about needing money for the kids. The thing was, she wasn’t asking for money. She was demanding it. I told her to get lost. If she would have been even halfway polite, I might have given her something.

There’s a couple of young bums in the area. They are probably still in their 20s. Their hair is filthy and uncombed, their clothing is disgusting. I constantly see them pushing their shopping carts around. Some of them look like they’re severely mentally imbalanced, to the point that I wouldn’t even feel safe anywhere near them. They just look like trouble.

Good Samaritan offers have to be weighed on a case by case basis with some gut instinct involved. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate the truly deserving from the bums.
I’ve helped people out a few times, including car repairs on the side of the road to get them going again, but details are irrelevant.

Here’s a good story, guys

A few years ago, I provided “free” labor to one of my brother’s acquaintances. It was a family, as a matter of fact.

I replaced a timing belt with all the seals, v-belts, a full tune-up and transmission fluid and filter service. And, here’s the good part. I partially resealed the oil pump. This was on a Toyota 5S-FE engine, by the way, for those of you who may be curious. The leak was so severe, that it was literally undrivable. I’m talking a Niagara Falls size leak, and you had to top off the oil level daily.

Anyways, the repairs went well. I believe my brother may have even paid for the parts. The car ran well, and the oil leak was 100% resolved

I sat down with them and explained that I expected to be paid when they were financially back on their feet, about $400, I believe

Time goes by. There is no money, and I never hear from them.

Fast forward a few years . . . I saw a movie trailer, and it turns out the upcoming movie was written by these 2 welchers. They are a husband and wife screenwriter team. I don’t have 100% proof, but my brother has some contacts, and has it on good authority that they received a princely paycheck. Apparently they’ve not repaid any of the numerous people that lent them money over the years. These 2 wouldn’t even have had a roof over their heads if not for the generosity of their acquaintances.

Here’s something else funny. These 2 folks are part of a Christian writer’s group. I suppose it’s possible to be a good Christian and a welcher at the same time

The only good part is that, from the very beginning, I had a gut feeling that there was a very real possibility that I would not get one red cent from these folks

Being right is not always a good thing

LOL

I don’t know about the sincerity of the OP’s panhandler, but if you walk up and down the main drag in Palo Alto, CA you are almost certain to have someone come up to you and say they are trying to drive home to someplace 200 or 300 miles away, in dire straights, out of gas and out of money, sometimes their car broke down, etc, and asking you for some $$ help. Then the next time you go there, weeks later, you are likely to see the same person, doing the same thing.

OK, back to cars again. Db reminded me. At church we have a Sudanese pastor that we have kind of adopted and he conducts a Sudanese service within our congregation every week. He doesn’t get paid much and struggles and was having trouble with his car. The estimate he got was $400. So my wife kicked in $100, I put up $100, and some others put up the rest. Our main pastor took the car to the local Goodyear dealer who also is a member to have it fixed. Total bill was $700 instead for all the work that had to be done. When our pastor went to pay for it though, it was all forgiven with a Merry Christmas. We’ll be putting the $400 together for gas and food cards for him.

@db4690, some years ago a now ex-brother in law by marriage blew up the engine in his Chevy pickup due to pure neglect. He was briefly in-between jobs and I felt sorry for him; telling him to hold off on a 1000 dollar motor for a few days. I dropped by an obscure small salvage yard where I had some dealings and the guy had just gotten in a banged up Chevy with a 350 that could actually be taken out and driven. He said 250 for the engine, pulled with tax and all accessories. The engine fired right up and sounded great although the car looked like garbage.

The ex-BIL bought it after driving it and I installed it free of charge. The only additional expense he had was coolant, oil, and filter. The truck ran like a top and off he went, happy as could be.
That was the next to last time I ever saw him, never even got a thank you, and to add insult to injury, I found out later that he was telling everyone how I “screwed him over”. Go figure.

I did make a visit to his house one night to discuss this (not the engine or thank you but the “screwed” part) with him in a not so polite manner and he wouldn’t come to the door for any conversation; choosing to hide out in the kitchen.

He bailed out of town and screwed my sister in law over on the way shortly afterwards but not before a little revenge was extracted…

As I mentioned earlier, I have given money to people who appeared to be truly in need. However, sometimes it is good to be cautious and to observe before giving money.

As an example of what I am talking about, many years ago, when I was in Mexico City, there was a young woman with an infant who always seemed to be sitting in the same spot near my hotel, begging for money. As I toured the city, I noticed a fairly large number of similar-age young women, all with infants, and all begging for money.

Well, one evening, I happened to returning to the hotel a bit later than usual, and I observed the young woman getting into a shiny new Ford LTD, which–in the '70s–was about the fanciest car that you would see in Mexico. I thought that this was curious, so I kept my eyes open for the next few nights, and I observed this same car picking up many of the other young beggar women from the street.

I mentioned my observation to the desk clerk at the hotel, and he told me that there were organized criminal groups that use these genuinely impoverished women, and that the women receive only a few centavos from the many pesos that they collect daily. In other words, very much like a pimp/prostitute situation. While I remained sympathetic to these young women, I learned that giving them money would actually result in them receiving very little of it.

@VDCdriver, that sounds like what happened to the kids in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. The kids get sent out to beg for an adult who offers street kids shelter and food in exchange for the donations. They even went so far as to deliberately blind some of the kids so they could collect more.

@VDCdriver That system exists in many developing countries. When we lived in Malaysia there was an active “rent a beggar” organization that picked up beggars from their homes in a minibus, deposited them in strategic locations, and picked them up again at night. How much of the begging proceeds they got I don’t know. Presumably the beggars got just enough to stay interested in participating.

Some years ago in Mexico City a young man asked for money to eat. I happened to have a perfect banana, and held it out. He hesitated, then took it. I think he was a scammer who just happened to feel like eating a banana when I offered it and knew he wasn’t going to get any money.

Once in the bus station in Reynosa, a young boy came up and asked my wife for money to buy food. She dug out a nice ham sandwich and gave it to him. He took it but walked down a ways, then threw it on the ground. She was furious and went running down there shouting at him. He ran for his life, which was a real good idea. She hates to see food wasted.

Once in Cordoba, Ver. we were waiting for the bus to Mexico City. My wife went to the john, and a woman came up and asked for money, saying they had come from out of town and needed bus fare across the city to their house. I told her to wait for my wife to come back. A young man, probably her son, was waiting and he tried to look invisible as if he were embarrassed.

My wife listened to her and gave her the money, a reasonable amount for local bus. I sneaked out behind them and they did get on a local bus. My wife said once that exact thing happened to her and some kind person likewise helped her out, so she felt she was passing the favor on.

My sister-in-law says giving money to beggars is like putting food out in front of your house for dogs. People come from dire poverty in the country to Mexico City, and are so desperate they beg for money. It works so well they don’t bother to look for work. And, tell their kin in the country to come join the take.

A colleague of mine who worked in Peru and Bolivia had an interesting social experience. He was accosted by a kid begging at the same spot every time. Since he speaks fluent Spanish, he engaged the kid and offered to buy him a shoe shine kit so he could make some honest money shining shoes.

It succeeded for a litle while; then the kid was begging again. He asked him what happened to the shoe shine kit and he told him he sold it and went back to begging, which might have been more profitable for him. You can lead a horse to the water.

Just a couple of years ago some panhandlers popped up around here in several towns and represented themselves as part of a Fort Worth, TX based church collecting donations for the needy. A local small town cop became suspicious and did some investigative work by getting the names of those panhandlers.

It was all a scam and once the PD started coming around they headed for other grounds. It had been determined that several of them were career criminals and others had outstanding arrest warrants.

For some reason there’s been a rash of people hanging out at the entrance to Wal Mart over the last couple of years. The MO is the same; holding a sign stating they’re traveling, broke, and need gas money.
Once or twice maybe I could see this. But half a dozen times in a month or so? What are the odds of that many stranded travelers in one place.

When good things happen to bad people, I had a blowout on the rear tire about 15 miles out of Knoxville on my triumph motorcycle, I mean the tire was flopping from one side of the rim to the other at 35mph as it happened at 65mph, and slowed down as quickly as possible. Alone I would have bailed but had a passenger, who had never been on a scooter, and luckily she had asked what do I do if there is a problem. I told her be consistent, no shifting weight from one side to the other etc., so we pulled over safely, found out later a rim lock with folded over rubber on new tires and tubes was the problem, so there sat I, buds girlfiends best friend, my bud and his girlfriend, he and her on a norton and us dead in the water.

Some guy pulls up, liked english bikes, was an alderman and had a towing company that owed him a few favors. The towing company dragged out an old pickup truck, towed us into a friend of my buds house and dropped off the cycle at a respectable cycle tire dealer. They would not accept any charge and that moment I thought I have been repaid for all the things I have been doing for other people, and have to build up some more credits as life goes on.