Last weekend, as I was sitting at a table in A Good Life Cafe in Ogden, eating a club sandwich, I saw a homeless man walking toward me on the sidewalk. His hair was disheveled, his beard unkempt, and his oversized, puffy jacket was peppered with patches. Just as it seemed that the man was going to look up and make eye contact with me, a young, well-dressed woman stepped out of the cafe, drawing his attention.
“Excuse me,” he said in a voice laden with despair, exhaustion and humility. “I’m trying to get some money for lunch, can you spare anything?” Apparently thrown off guard, the woman shook her head and rushed to her car. The man’s shoulders rolled forward in discouragement, and his pace slowed.
When he was within a few steps of my table, he lifted his head and shot me a pitiful glance. I held his gaze in expectation of the forthcoming plea. “I’m trying to get some money for lunch, can you spare anything?” he repeated in the same hopeless tone he’d employed with the young woman. I fished the last two dollar bills from my wallet and handed them to the man. “Thanks,” he grumbled, stuffing the bills into his jacket pocket.
As he turned to walk away, a voice from behind called “Hey!” It was the young woman, and she was holding a parcel. When he turned around, she extended it to him, smiling. “Here’s a fresh sandwich from the Good Life Cafe. It was for my boyfriend, but you can have it.”
The man’s face was suddenly distorted by a look of utter disgust. “I need money!” he barked at her.
“Yeah, money for lunch. Here is some lunch for you,” replied the confused young lady.
“I need money! Money, OK?” the man practically yelled at the good samaritan. She began to reply, but stopped and returned to her car. The man shuffled away briskly, perhaps realizing he’d made a scene and tainted the pool of potential benefactors. I wanted my money back.
I am not naive enough to think every panhandler is an innocent victim of hard times and hunger. I realize that, in giving a few bucks to someone who appears to be homeless or downtrodden, I run the risk of losing my cash to a drug or alcohol habit. I know people who never give out money for this very reason. The typical argument is “I’m not going to give my hard-earned dollar to some bum who’s going to use it to go get high.” However, that doesn’t really bother me or dissuade me from giving money. It doesn’t even bother me if they lie about why they need money. What bothered me about the man at A Good Life Cafe was his blatant contempt for kindness. In refusing that woman’s sandwich, he was actually stealing from her. Not money but the chance to do something good.
No one gives money, food or even pity to a panhandler without expecting something in return. In the homeless and the destitute we see an opportunity to empathize with someone who is suffering. When we see them holding up signs on street corners, we try to envision the tragic set of circumstances that might have landed them in their current predicament. In exchange for a buck or two, we are afforded a greater appreciation for our own circumstances, a feeling of moral superiority and, sometimes, a renewed hope for humanity.
When the young woman returned with her sandwich offering, a sense of compassion and pride swelled within me. I felt like I was connected to a caring civilization. “Humanity is good after all,” I thought. “If I ever fall upon hard times and wind up on the streets, I will surely survive by the good will of my fellow men and women.” My perception of the world was temporarily tinged with rosy hopefulness.
Had the bum simply accepted the woman’s sandwich, we all could have walked away feeling better than we had before. The woman and I could have felt like altruistic heroes who made selfless sacrifices in order to save a broken man from starvation. The man would have been two dollars and a delicious sandwich richer. The bum’s seemingly desperate situation could have catalyzed a shared positive experience for all three of us. Instead, he shattered the illusion that the young woman and I were trying to create and left us with a bitter feeling of betrayal.
Panhandlers know the power of empathy, and most of them are aware of their ability to create self-admiring emotions of others. Empathy is their currency. Most of them know that, and whether we are conscious of it or not, we know it too. I personally was not aware of this emotional exchange until the bum outside of A Good Life Cafe broke the unspoken code and cracked my delusions of altruism. He forgot the secret rule of panhandling. He forgot that he was selling a service.