(Intensively reworked from a 2012 post.)
There was one time when I had no problem seeing through a scam. I was sitting on a freeway off ramp, waiting for the signal to change so I could turn onto the boulevard. There was a guy with a sign that said something like, "Hungry--please help--God bless". The problem, as I saw it, was that he handed the sign to another guy & left. I assumed his shift was over. I didn't donate to either of them.
Here are some other examples of questionable panhandling:
Jose & Carlos are panhandling at the freeway off ramp.
Jose drives a Mercedes, lives in a mortgage free house & has a lot of money to spend.
Carlos brings in only two to three dollars a day.
He asks Jose how he can bring home a suitcase full of ten dollar bills every day.
Jose says, "Look at your sign. It says, 'I have no work, a wife & 6 kids to support'. Nobody cares."
Carlos looks at Jose's sign. It says, "I only need another $10.00 to move back to Mexico."
A man came out of a convenience store the other day & some seedy looking guy walks up to him & holds up a little sign: "DEAF & MUTE Can you spare $10?" WOW!! $10!! What happened to a dollar or two? So he reached into his pocket for his wallet, opened it, took out a folded piece of paper & handed it to him. It said, "I can't read"--& he walked away.
This could have been one of the guys I saw:
These deserve something for their ingenuity:
A WARNING!!
YOU'D BETTER DONATE SOMETIMES!!!!
And it's not just people:
The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts. Please leave a comment, anyway----fishducky
