Adrienne Writes

I am trying to support the businesses in my neighborhood. I go to my farmer’s market in the spring, summer and fall. I get gas around the corner. I try mightily to visit the local Jewel-Osco rather than the swankier Whole Foods that is downtown. I also try to get certain products from Sav-A-Lot. It’s cheap, has very few name brands and it sells stuff like “Orange Pop” and “Red Pop” and “Purple Pop.”

Unfortunately, Sav-A-Lot also allows beggars to beg inside the store. Perhaps this isn’t an official policy, but at my local SAL, it seems to be the norm.

Imagine my surprise when I loaded peanut butter, paper plates and purple pop onto the conveyor belt to be purchased and at the other end of the belt was some guy asking for cash. Now, I hate when people invade my personal space and ask me for money. Times are hard, but times are also scary, so back up off me. It seems that everyone is strapped, so I prefer to keep a one foot barrier between me and any potential jostlings of gun handles.

So this guy sees me pull out my debit card and swipe it. He’s still standing there, looking at me. The cashier tells him to move along. I shield the keypad with my palm and punch in my number. Then the beggar asks me for $20.

$20!

Given my suspicious nature, I’m hard-pressed to give away anything on the street – or in a store. I prefer to donate through church or other means that won’t involve the potentiality of losing my one-foot barrier, getting car jacked, purse-snatched or flat out taken by gunpoint to the ATM to empty my bank account. (Bear with me on this. I’m a recovering police reporter, and I fully understand what people are capable of doing if they have the inclination to do it. A guy down the street was taken by gunpoint to an ATM by teens! They had no idea how to hold the gun and one of the perps wound up shooting herself in the foot and bleeding to death. smh. The kids only got $24. But I digress.)

Back to this dude asking me for $20 out of my debit account.

I said No. Flat out. No.

He wants to argue with me about the money.

I look at the cashier. Cashier looks at me. Cashier looks a bit scared.

Security comes over and tries to get the begging man to leave the store. He goes, hollering the whole way.

I wrap up my purple pop and my paper plates and head to my car.

But begging man is still hounding me. He’s right by the door. The minute I come out he tries to get close. So I speed up my pace. It’s a busy corner, busy parking lot, so I’m not really worried but, he’s clearly crazy and focused on me. Now he’s following me to my car, shouting and yelling about needing $20. He uses every derogatory word in the book in his effort to persuade me to give him money. I slam my car door in his face. He hits the door with his hand.

I contemplate hitting him as I pull out my parking spot. But that wouldn’t be fair, car against man. But I was tempted….

In any event, is this what charity has now come to? People shouting and yelling and nearly physically accosting you to arm wrestle $20? Hell, I might have bought him lunch if he’d asked. But he didn’t want food, he wanted money.

In another instance, a coworker of mine and I were walking down MIchigan Avenue, headed to lunch. A well-dressed white lady, pulling a suitcase, stops and asks us for $2.38.

Again. $2.38. What’s THAT about?

“I need to get on the El,” she says. “And I left my purse in my car and my car got towed. So I need money to get to the tow yard on the El.”

Co worker and I share a look. Here we go. Usually when the crazies ask you for $2.38 cents, it’s a set up similar to asking you for the time. The answer is always, always, always, “I don’t have it” or “I don’t know.”

It was the same for this day.

We quickly sidestep the woman – and others – on the busy sidewalk. I don’t know who her accomplice is, but that “what time is it” or “do you have an odd amount of money” spiel only works on okeydokes. We tell her to go into the hotel, use her debit card there to get money.

Then she spins this yarn about her purse being in her car, which got towed, but somehow she managed to yank her suitcase out the car before the tow truck drove away. And for some reason, she just doesn’t know that you can always go to the tow yard and get your purse out your car – even if you can’t pay the parking ticket and tow fee.

The answer is still no. Who asks for $2.38? The last thing I’m going to do is dig into my purse for change on a busy city street. That’s how Coaches get snatched.

She jerks past us, holding onto that suitcase for dear life. She also walks right on past the hotel and past a police officer. She doesn’t ask anyone else for $2.38.

She knows, and we know, that the El don’t cost $2.38.

I’m still wondering why you have a suitcase, you don’t have a car, you don’t have any ID at all AND you don’t want to talk to the police about it… Suspect…