Scammed

I work in the Loop, and have about a mile walk from Union Station to my office building. Along the way, I pass by a lot of regular beggars, and it always baffles me when I see other commuters giving change to these people. In my opinion, after 3 years of working downtown and not once handing out a single penny, these people still manage to be alive and well, so they must be doing just fine without my donation. And I know that even if I give them some change today, they will be right back in that same spot tomorrow asking me for more. So I do my best to avoid eye contact and just make my way quickly past.




But there are a few of them who are more pushy than others, and make themselves harder to completely ignore. There is the lady who yells, "HI! C'n ya sprr su CHANGE!?" (although every once in awhile she's too busy talking on her cell phone instead of asking for money. i guess she's got to pay that verizon bill somehow...)

And there is the guy at the end of the bridge with the crutch who rattles around a few coins in a McDonald's cup while holding a sign that says something about God blessing those who help, trying to get the sympathy hand-out. I can't imagine that this guy is fooling anyone just by leaning on that crutch. I can stand around with my leg turned inward too. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm crippled.

And then there is the legless guy at LaSalle and Adams who shouts "Good morning!" to everyone who passes him. And this is the guy who scammed me out of $6 one day...

I had long-ago discovered that the best strategy against these beggars was to just avoid them as best I could. So I simply began walking on the other side of the street as I crossed LaSalle, until one morning when a coworker came in and told me that he had just talked to the legless guy. My buddy found out that this guy was also a military vet, which gave the two of them something to talk about, and that he was a really nice, well-intentioned guy. My friend had tried to give him $20, but this guy responded that he wasn't out there for money. He got enough from his disability checks to get by. And after fighting in the war and seeing all the hatred people have for each other, he thought he'd just go out there and try to make people smile by wishing them a good day.

I thought that was pretty cool. And it made me feel really bad about judging this guy and trying to avoid him. So I began walking past him every morning, giving him a big smile, and wishing him a good day. And I noticed how many shitty people walked right past him and couldn't even be bothered to say hello back or give him a smile.

This went on daily for quite a few months that I would walk past and greet him. And I even let it slide that he would sometimes say things to me like, "Hey. You have a great smile!" or "Good morning, Beautiful Lady!" because his intentions overall seemed good. And he would always say "Go Blue!" when I wore my U of M jacket, so that scored him some extra points with me.

But one Saturday morning, I was on my way to work and he was out there as usual. As I approached him, getting ready to say "Good morning," he surprised me by saying, "Hey beautiful. Can you spare a few dollars?"

WHAT?! Where the hell did this come from? He told my buddy that he wasn't out there for money. But by this point, after months of friendly greetings every day, I had grown to think he was a nice guy. And then to make it even harder to say no, he added, "My brother needs a new kidney so I'm trying to collect money to help him."

So in an effort to avoid confrontation, I gave him the $6 that I had on me.

He seemed sincerely grateful for the donation, but I was still a little put off by it. And the more I thought about it, I realized that this might have been his plan all along; sit out there every day, don't ask for money, be super nice to people, build up a good reputation with these people, and then after they think you're a cool person, pull a 180 and ask for money, and since you've been so awesome to so many people for so many months, and have a sob-story to go along with the request, it's pretty likely that these people will give you money. Brilliant.

So now I walk on the other side of the street again.