Don wrote:Melissa wrote:Fact Finder wrote:In Cincy we have some sort of organized panhandlers. A handler will transport them to various spots around town, drop them off to beg for a few hours and then pick them back up. I've seen one in particular near our local Burger King and I'm in the burbs. Dude stands in a traffic island right outside the drive thru exit. It's pure genius, on one side of the island is BK with traffic going left and on the right side is an Ice Cream store which exits with traffic going right. Plus there's a stop light right there, so most cars have to stop and look the fucker in the face. One morning I watched a BK customer (lady), pull out there and hand the guy a five. Then about 3 weeks later this same dude came knocking on my front door and I knew immediately who he was. He claimed to be a war veteran and was asking for a few bucks to paint street numbers on the curb, he was carrying paint and brushes in a backpack. I pointed out to him that we don't have curbs with painted street numbers and sent him on his way.
Just recently saw a news report about this where we live, and it's amazing how this operates and the serious cash they can make. One guy even bragged about making $400-$600 a DAY. Pretty incredible. I've been asked if the "homeless" person from here is no longer with us, and no, I'm told they're fine, definitely not homeless (and never was), and supposedly had a baby with their longtime partner (who was apparently unaware of their own "homelessness"
). I'm pretty sure my very friendship with the person was made fun of and talked about by one in a very crappy manner, but that's fine, drama lovers prove to never rest. Who knew it could be such a problem to simply be humane and a friend to someone claiming to be so down and out. But I guess that's happened here numerous times from what I'm told and probably will happen again, same story different people.
Come on, name names! It's your civic duty to protect the other members here!
Well, I had a much better reply here that I lost thanks to this new stupid board timing out twice (even though I clicked the check box thing) and I'm not redoing all that...
...but my basic point was that all joking aside here, she's totally right, who knew that being helpful to someone who claims to have such a bad situation could be such a problem. But it does happen, all in the name of doing a favor or being kind to someone who you believe needs help because they make a lot of b.s. claims about how hard their life is, or lies about their "problems" for attention or personal gain... probably all of us have or know someone who has a story like that... I don't really regret trying to be nice or doing a favor for someone who turned out to be full of shit, I mean you run a risk of getting burned even by the best of friends that way sometimes... I would do that for people anyway, what I
do regret is not doing, as Don puts, the
"civic duty" in one incident where I could have stopped it. I didn't know how.
I had the knowledge to prevent more people from also being lied to, and I did and said nothing because I couldn't. I'd have looked like the crazy one (even more than I probably already did
) if I said word one. That was the
point, I suppose, you'd want to discredit the people who could blow up your game, right? I just hope no one got hurt. It still upsets me to think that I couldn't do anything.
Don wrote: I wonder if some folk here send out begging letters in flurries? Running multiple lines and hoping their charity angels don't cross paths with each other?
Probably not... good scammers would cut one line before starting another to make sure they don't cross. In fact one kind soul did try to do their civic duty by telling me once that one person was not to be trusted and I asked the person... "Hey so and so said this, what's that about, why would they say that?" and the response was that the person "hates me and has it out for me because of an old argument blah blah blah" and then got REALLY mad that I even asked and accused me of not trusting them - red flag. They were discrediting the friend who told me that so their game wouldn't be blown up. And I didn't ask the kind soul for further details which was a HUGE mistake. That was the multiple lines starting to cross, though. Eventually everything crosses, that's what dumbasses like that don't figure out.
That all being said, that does not indicate that I think that's what this topic was about initially - Everett I hope things are improving for you.
This was a lot to catch up on and I'm not sure if I made it through all the pages. I was just agreeing with the points about things like this not always being what they seem. While it may not be wise to assume you can trust people and that requested help is on the up and up, it's also wise to know that things are not necessarily always as bad as they seem either.
