Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
“I was walking to a concert in downtown Chicago in late November. This happened on North Dearborn right in the loop, if you’ve never been to Chicago its one of the nicer parts of downtown. It was a cold night, so I was walking with both hands in my pockets and a cig in my mouth. I was approached by a younger dude, who didn’t appear to be homeless immediately as he was dressed semi decently and didn’t reek or anything. He asked me if he could bum a cig, I was in a good mood going to the concert so I said sure and gave him one, along with my lighter. He handed me my lighter back and I expected he would keep walking on, but he matched pace with me and asked how I was doing. I told him fine and asked how he was doing, he said he’s just trying to make it out here. I thought “here we go”, he asked me for money because he said he hadn’t eaten all day.
Now I had about 200 in cash on me, mostly in 20s, I had maybe a couple smaller bills so its not like I couldn’t give him money. But I didn’t want to pull out a wad of any size in front of a guy I don’t know on the street, and people can judge me or whatever but I’m not in the habit of giving money to homeless people but I always try to treat them with respect and dignity. I politely told him “sorry man I don’t have any cash.”
He got kind of angry at that point, and launched into a guilt trippy tirade for the next half block or so about how nobody has any compassion anymore and sometimes people just need a little help. I didn’t say anything in response. Truth be told I started to feel kind of bad for him, what he said is pretty true a lot of people aren’t willing to help other people and sometimes people really just are down on their luck. I was second guessing my decision to turn him down until we reached the next intersection, I was going straight and he cut to the right. I had to stop for the crosswalk, and I watched him get not five steps away from me before he took the cigarette I gave him (that he’d barely sucked on because he was too busy yelling at me) out of his mouth and threw it on the ground. He then proceeded to walk right up to another dude and start talking to him.
Maybe I didn’t “help” him much per se, but if he was as down on his luck as he wanted me to believe he would’ve been burning the filter on that thing before giving it up. I instantly felt vindicated.”
Story credit: Reddit / JimothySanchez96