I don't know...... I spend a lot of time waiting for trains, buses, plains. And in this waiting time I talk often to homeless/beggars around. It resulted in few entertaining stories. Basically 100 % of whom I talked too had either drug/alc or psycho problems. But again .... who am I to judge and feel like I am better....

No money in panhandling, everyone's squalid

haha

Speaking from my own experiences as a short-term-hard-luck type homeless person, it is hard to get hired if you don't have an address, or your address is 'general delivery'.

(my situation was due to ruinous divorce and subsequent flare up of chronic depression which caused me to lose my job - if anyone is interested)

I had my car which made me an order of magnitude better off than hard-core homeless.

The thing I learned is why so many have dogs. I always used to think, if you can't take care of yourself, wtf are you doing with a dog?

Now I know. Fido has your back while you sleep.

Have you made a thread on this before, including the homeless time? If not and you'd be OK with sharing, I think it would be incredibly interesting to read.

I gave some details in amazin's Homeless thread.

The circumstances of my job loss are still pretty raw after two years. What I learned there is that HR is ****ing useless for anything but doing benefits paperwork and other bull**** anyone with a particle of sense and an internet link can do for themselves.

If you are having personal issues and troubles with an ******* supervisor, and you turn to them for help, good luck with that. They are unprepared and apathetic to boot.

I still don't give **** to homeless people, due to bad experiences with them on the streets of Atlanta nearly 20 years ago.

The other day my ten year-old son and I were going into a store. A homeless guy with his dog was flying a sign outside the door.

I barreled past him without a look. Couple seconds later I notice my son is giving him a dollar from his recycling earnings.

I was torn. My kid puts in effort to make that cash and I hated to see him get conned out of any, as I saw it.

On the other hand, should I tell him giving that money was a bad idea, just because I'm a cynical ****, start hardening his heart when he's so young?

I said nothing. Just waited for him to catch up to me. Kids are sweet.

Kid will learn when he's older. For now let him feel good, yeah.

So efffin good!

+1 on not crushing his idealism just yet

This dude has a job. He makes fake signs.

You make some damn good points. Pretty smart for an ex-con.

Good kids are the products of good parenting. Nice job.

Thanks Josie

Yeah, so I think the real don't need to do it pros are the ones you see at the same place every day at the same time. A lot of those guys are more qualified for customer service work than I am. It takes some decent social skills or social courage, whatever you want to call it, to look strangers in the eye and ask them for money. Decent social skills make landing entry level jobs easy.

I also just pretend that they don't exist or say "sorry" "No thanks".

But I definitely support basic income and believe people should be provided minimum sustenence. Enough to eat, have water, and then maybe like $50/mo of entertainment. If they want to eat the minimum, drink water, and spend their money on weed and video games, that's fine by me, I don't think they should have to "work for the money" or anything like that.

I also just pretend that they don't exist or say "sorry" "No thanks".

But I definitely support basic income and believe people should be provided minimum sustenence. Enough to eat, have water, and then maybe like $50/mo of entertainment. If they want to eat the minimum, drink water, and spend their money on weed and video games, that's fine by me, I don't think they should have to "work for the money" or anything like that.

I occasionally give homeless folks food. Never money.

Sorry, I only carry hundreds.

I heard socks are the number one thing they want/need and it sounds like you always have a few extra on you.

LBR wins the internet today!

Opened a pack of socks this morning. 6 pairs. There's a 13th sock in there. I'm flummoxed. The poor sock has been separated from its mate. It has a poor future.

I can relegate it to the rag drawer, or leave it in the sock drawer and hope one day, a decade or two from now, that I'll again buy a pack of socks with another orphan.

I see no reason to not just put it into the rotation. Who says two socks need to go through life attached solely to each other?

Don't tell me that socks you have stay in pairs till they die. Because my socks regularly become singles. The socks SO somehow disappear. My hypothesis is that there is a black hole for socks in my washing machine. I have heard that others have similar situation.

No. But I do keep 6 pairs of athletic sock in rotation at a time. They all wear out at the same rate and get replaced as a group. Adding one sock ruins that.