now I can't stop typing
Nov. 11th, 2007 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkThe store where I work is on a very busy commercial drag with a lot of walking traffic. This is very different from my old store, which was right off a freeway exit and most people were coming in by driving.
There are five homeless people that I see every day on my block.
- Middle aged guy sits in a lawn chair and reads out loud from the Bible, or when he's not doing that he tells people jokes.
- Younger guy sells the homeless newspaper saying "street SPIRIT, good MORNING".
- Older guy walks up and down saying "Ma'am. Ma'am. Whatever you can. Sir. Whatever you can. Sir." If you say "Sorry", he says "Sorry won't help". He sometimes talks on a cell phone.
- Guy in clean and neat clothes sits in front of the post office and doesn't say anything, but has a cup for change and looks at each person who walks by, frowning or looking blank.
- Old woman sells paintings in front of Starbucks and says "Please help".
My boss complains about these people a lot, especially the old guy with the cell phone and the guy with clean clothes, because she believes they choose to panhandle because they're too lazy to work, and she is extremely indignant that they would beg her for money while she is working. One morning she told me this:
"When I went outside to check the window display, that bum was there who says street SPIRIT good MORNING. He said how are you, and I said fine, how are you. And he said he was hungry. So I said! Maybe you should get a job and then you wouldn't be hungry!"
She seemed very proud of her witty comeback.
I looked at her skeptically and said "That's pretty harsh. What would Jesus do?"
She said, "I think Jesus would encourage him to empower himself and get a job!"
Well, all right. I don't know if I made much of an impact on her. I mean WWJD is not exactly a devastating counter-argument between two atheists. But believe it or not this is actually an improvement over something that happened to me several years ago, but which still bothers me, and this reminded me of it.
I might have told this story before on my flocked journal when I had one, I don't remember. But at my old job, we had a lot of shoplifting. Sometimes people would pick up a container like a brush case (this was an art store) and put things in it while they walked around. So we'd notice it and let it be known we were watching them, and generally they'd put it back or pay for it.
There was one point where someone was doing exactly this, and it was a black guy. My manager then, who was a guy I hadn't worked with very long and didn't feel any particular way about, indicated to me that he thought this person was going to steal, and to watch. So I watched, but I didn't actually see him put anything in the brush case he was carrying around. After a while he put the brush case back and left, and I walked away.
My manager came upstairs after me, brandishing the brush case. He opened it up and showed me all the random items that had been stuffed inside.
"This," he said, "is why there's racism."
It would be a better story if I'd said... anything. At all. I just stared at him completely dumbstruck. He smiled triumphantly and walked back downstairs, and neither of us ever mentioned it again.
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Bay Area, maybe it's just me, but I'm too surprised when things like this happen to stand up to it in any effective way. Which scares me.
There are five homeless people that I see every day on my block.
- Middle aged guy sits in a lawn chair and reads out loud from the Bible, or when he's not doing that he tells people jokes.
- Younger guy sells the homeless newspaper saying "street SPIRIT, good MORNING".
- Older guy walks up and down saying "Ma'am. Ma'am. Whatever you can. Sir. Whatever you can. Sir." If you say "Sorry", he says "Sorry won't help". He sometimes talks on a cell phone.
- Guy in clean and neat clothes sits in front of the post office and doesn't say anything, but has a cup for change and looks at each person who walks by, frowning or looking blank.
- Old woman sells paintings in front of Starbucks and says "Please help".
My boss complains about these people a lot, especially the old guy with the cell phone and the guy with clean clothes, because she believes they choose to panhandle because they're too lazy to work, and she is extremely indignant that they would beg her for money while she is working. One morning she told me this:
"When I went outside to check the window display, that bum was there who says street SPIRIT good MORNING. He said how are you, and I said fine, how are you. And he said he was hungry. So I said! Maybe you should get a job and then you wouldn't be hungry!"
She seemed very proud of her witty comeback.
I looked at her skeptically and said "That's pretty harsh. What would Jesus do?"
She said, "I think Jesus would encourage him to empower himself and get a job!"
Well, all right. I don't know if I made much of an impact on her. I mean WWJD is not exactly a devastating counter-argument between two atheists. But believe it or not this is actually an improvement over something that happened to me several years ago, but which still bothers me, and this reminded me of it.
I might have told this story before on my flocked journal when I had one, I don't remember. But at my old job, we had a lot of shoplifting. Sometimes people would pick up a container like a brush case (this was an art store) and put things in it while they walked around. So we'd notice it and let it be known we were watching them, and generally they'd put it back or pay for it.
There was one point where someone was doing exactly this, and it was a black guy. My manager then, who was a guy I hadn't worked with very long and didn't feel any particular way about, indicated to me that he thought this person was going to steal, and to watch. So I watched, but I didn't actually see him put anything in the brush case he was carrying around. After a while he put the brush case back and left, and I walked away.
My manager came upstairs after me, brandishing the brush case. He opened it up and showed me all the random items that had been stuffed inside.
"This," he said, "is why there's racism."
It would be a better story if I'd said... anything. At all. I just stared at him completely dumbstruck. He smiled triumphantly and walked back downstairs, and neither of us ever mentioned it again.
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Bay Area, maybe it's just me, but I'm too surprised when things like this happen to stand up to it in any effective way. Which scares me.
