Don't Be That Guy

But I'm Not Sure Who You SHOULD Be Either

Recently, during a lunch break at a sandwich shop, a homeless man came in to plug in and charge his phone. He sat at the table in front of me and he and the staff were on a first name basis so I guessed that he did this often.

After a few minutes, he began gentle panhandling from his seat. As customers would come in, he’d ask for change. I found myself becoming annoyed. Was he allowed to do that from inside a business? Did the lunch shop let homeless people panhandle inside the building? Even though none of this involved, affected or bothered my lunch, for some reason I began to become frustrated at him, and at them.

And then the bro showed up. A young man walked in and the homeless man asked him for change. The exchange that took place was so surprising that I wrote it down.

“I don’t have anything for you. I don’t just give away money.”

“Maybe a hot chocolate?”

“What am I, your hot chocolate dealer?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what I know, I know that if you actually went and earned your money and got a job you could afford all the hot chocolate you want.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I worked too hard to just give my money away.”

I want to make a couple points here, and I’ll be up front with you - I don’t have the answers to these questions I’m about to ask, but it’s worth thinking about.

First, why punch down? What’s the benefit here? What sort of a miserable life do you lead to just yell at a homeless guy sitting there charging his phone?

And second, in seconds, my feelings flipped from irritation at the homeless guy to rage at the entitled young man.

And then, I thought to myself, but am I any better? What was my action item going to be? Nothing. I’d ignore him like I always did, like we always do. I would have just gone about my business and would have not even remembered him had that other person not become part of the story.

We shrug our shoulders at a lot of things in our everyday lives. Some of it is self-preservation - we’d go insane, literally, if we cared deeply about every ill. Some of it is hopelessness - what can we do about the problem, not much usually.

The young man sat down a couple tables over from the homeless man and calm returned. On my way out, I stopped at the counter and handed the clerk five dollars and asked her take a hot chocolate out to the homeless man, and then I left.

That won’t fix anything. It’s not a hero move. It didn’t make me feel better and I’m not a better person for doing that. But, I hoped that the young guy two tables over saw it when that hot chocolate arrived. And maybe next time I’ll stop and at least take a breath before walking away.