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ERRYDAY I'M HUSTLIN'

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Posts

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Weaver wrote: »
    #pipe wrote: »
    There's one dude who sits on busy downtown street corners in the winter with his shirt off and his hand out, shivering and rocking. Often he'll have a sign that says like "HUNGRY, HOMELESS, DESPERATE, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY"

    While walking home a couple times I've seen him polishing off a big mac and large coke, pulling off his coat and shirt and stashing them in an alley before talking up the position and commencing the shivering.

    Everyone who's been to PAX knows Dick's, right? The walk up burger place? It's real popular for panhandling, mostly been a couple of the same people the whole time I've lived here but they can't stake the place out all day long so you do get some new people once in a while. There was this huge seven foot tall-ish guy who had moved in there from his old spot outside the grocery store. Built like an NFL defensive player, really loud booming voice, wearing sweat pants and hoody, he'd have a sign that was always way too small to read unless you were right up by him, and when people would be passing right in front of him he'd bellow out "SPARE CHANGE, GUY?! like if Brian Blessed was asking for your spare coins.

    Now this Dick's is almost the half-way point between our apartment and the building where Nuka works and where my gym is, so I pass it all the time. This guy is almost always there now. Every day, SPARE CHANGE, GUY?!

    One morning I take a slightly different route walking to the gym because I'm playing a cell phone game that uses GPS coordinates and I wanted to hit up some different points, and I see this guy step off a bus, wearing regular, clean clothes, big backpack, looking at his ipad with some big headphones on. A week or so later we go out for late night burgers and he's up there in his panhandling outfit, booms his line at us, and my stupid mouth just blurts out back at him, "SPARE IPAD, GUY?!" and I immediately regretted everything and thought I was about to get squished into the sidewalk.

    He didn't say anything at all, got our burgers and left, haven't seen him there since.


    He probably didn't come back because you were a huge dick to him.

  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    Blake T wrote: »
    Weaver wrote: »
    #pipe wrote: »
    There's one dude who sits on busy downtown street corners in the winter with his shirt off and his hand out, shivering and rocking. Often he'll have a sign that says like "HUNGRY, HOMELESS, DESPERATE, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY"

    While walking home a couple times I've seen him polishing off a big mac and large coke, pulling off his coat and shirt and stashing them in an alley before talking up the position and commencing the shivering.

    Everyone who's been to PAX knows Dick's, right? The walk up burger place? It's real popular for panhandling, mostly been a couple of the same people the whole time I've lived here but they can't stake the place out all day long so you do get some new people once in a while. There was this huge seven foot tall-ish guy who had moved in there from his old spot outside the grocery store. Built like an NFL defensive player, really loud booming voice, wearing sweat pants and hoody, he'd have a sign that was always way too small to read unless you were right up by him, and when people would be passing right in front of him he'd bellow out "SPARE CHANGE, GUY?! like if Brian Blessed was asking for your spare coins.

    Now this Dick's is almost the half-way point between our apartment and the building where Nuka works and where my gym is, so I pass it all the time. This guy is almost always there now. Every day, SPARE CHANGE, GUY?!

    One morning I take a slightly different route walking to the gym because I'm playing a cell phone game that uses GPS coordinates and I wanted to hit up some different points, and I see this guy step off a bus, wearing regular, clean clothes, big backpack, looking at his ipad with some big headphones on. A week or so later we go out for late night burgers and he's up there in his panhandling outfit, booms his line at us, and my stupid mouth just blurts out back at him, "SPARE IPAD, GUY?!" and I immediately regretted everything and thought I was about to get squished into the sidewalk.

    He didn't say anything at all, got our burgers and left, haven't seen him there since.


    He probably didn't come back because you were a huge dick to him.

    Sounds like he deserved it.

    LxX6eco.jpg
    PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
  • ChincymcchillaChincymcchilla Registered User regular
    I think that was a joke

    Dicks

    get it

    I have a podcast about Power Rangers:Teenagers With Attitude | TWA Facebook Group
  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    No.

    How do you know he owns that iPad? Maybe he borrowed it off a guy and was running it back.

    Or if he did own it was given as a gift by a friend. How would your friend feel if you sold a present they saved up for.

    Maybe he bought it second hand and uses it to apply for jobs. Since the older versions are a lot cheaper.

    You don't have to give the dude any money you don't want to, but it's pretty fucking low to try and decide who is "too rich" to beg.

  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    Nah, he moved on from that spot because he knew people had found out about his grift.

    LxX6eco.jpg
    PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Tell me more about this person's life that you obviously know everything about syphon blue.

    I am fascinated to hear about your incites in what I can only assume is your best friend.

  • SyphonBlueSyphonBlue The studying beaver That beaver sure loves studying!Registered User regular
    edited December 2014
    Yeah like I'm really sure that the lady who asked my friends for a phone and then another group of people for another phone the very next day in the same spot just lost that phone

    I mean I don't know anything about her life either so maybe she just really needed two phones

    SyphonBlue on
    LxX6eco.jpg
    PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
  • ChincymcchillaChincymcchilla Registered User regular
    Blake T wrote: »
    Tell me more about this person's life that you obviously know everything about syphon blue.

    I am fascinated to hear about your incites in what I can only assume is your best friend.

    Relax dude

    I have a podcast about Power Rangers:Teenagers With Attitude | TWA Facebook Group
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Nah Blake go easy, if he has an iPad and a suit to wear he must also have a house, a job, a BMW, and a yacht.

    That's how that works, right?

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    I can tell you a story.

    I saw a homeless dude once. Big guy. Newly minted without a house. Clothes all clean. Asking for money though. I didn't give him anything.

    Saw him at the train station and he was counting money. He had at least two hundred bucks on him.

    By your logic next time I saw him I should have stood next to him and yelled, "Hey man can fit spare two hundred dollars?"

    Over the next year I saw him waste away to nothing. He went from 150kgs to maybe 65kgs. Tell me, was he really scamming am those people when he was asking for money.

    Of you don't want to give them cash, whatever that's cool. I don't care. But it's pretty shitty to decide who can beg and who can't.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    SyphonBlue wrote: »
    Yeah like I'm really sure that the lady who asked my friends for a phone and then another group of people for another phone the very next day in the same spot just lost that phone

    I mean I don't know anything about her life either so maybe she just really needed two phones

    When we're we talking about that person.

    That guy didn't have a scan going. He was saying, spare some change. Tell me where the sneaky thing is going on.

    This is what we are discussing.

    When your friend asks to borrow twenty bucks, do you yell, I saw you drive a car last week?

  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    edited December 2014
    I understand that homelessness or begging does not exclude ownership of property. If it somehow wasn't clear, this guys thing was startling and scaring people all day long by aggressively looming up over and yelling/bellowing his phrase at people as they passed on the sidewalk. Walking along, sudden 7-foot beast-mode looking guy yelling at you. It gets old, and I only said something to him because he had just bellowed at me for probably the 40th time and it just came out. It's not a habit.

    Weaver on
  • WeaverWeaver Who are you? What do you want?Registered User regular
    Here's something more actual scam..well, more like fraud. I've been job searching since the end of June so some weeks it gets tight and I'll go to the food bank. Went last week because buying people Christmas presents ate into the budget. There was a lady there loudly trying to tell random people in the line about how she goes to the next town over and pretends to be homeless so that the city will pick her up and give her food vouchers.

  • TheStigTheStig Registered User regular
    knitdan wrote: »
    There were a few times in my life I fell for the "family stranded, need money for car repair/gas/whatever" scam.

    Then last year I wasn't even out of my car yet before this lady came up and started with her bullshit story, and I had to threaten calling the cops before she'd go away.

    One time a woman was driving her giant suv around a shopping mart parking lot asking people for gas money. I was like, no you are doing this all wrong.

    bnet: TheStig#1787 Steam: TheStig
  • DaMoonRulzDaMoonRulz Mare ImbriumRegistered User regular
    One of my coworkers has an aunt that has plenty of money who goes to the street corner and holds up a sign for money just to get some extra spending cash.

    3basnids3lf9.jpg




  • A Dabble Of TheloniusA Dabble Of Thelonius It has been a doozy of a dayRegistered User regular
    edited December 2014
    Jumping out at people and yelling or blurting out something in an aggressive fashion isn't cool and I dare say that in a different story we would be all tisk tisk you shouldn't invade people's space etc etc.

    So yeah, it's not Weavers story that's dickish here.


    Addendum : Kindness is good but I have to stress that nowadays it is a BAD IDEA to give strangers a lift.

    A Dabble Of Thelonius on
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  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited December 2014
    It's also important to remember some people actually do need gas or change and are legit in trouble, just because some people are dicks about it and use it as a scam doesn't mean everyone is. I'm usually of the ignore crowd, and one time I was meeting some friends for breakfast when this older guy, mid 40s, was going around the parking lot asking for money for gas. His story was he had driven here for a job interview and now didn't have gas to get home. Everyone was ignoring him because he was asking for money while being Hispanic (practically a crime in some areas of the deep south), and when he came to my wife and I he was about in tears.

    I didn't have any cash on me, but I offered to push his car over to the gas station and get him a few gallons, thinking that it would either prove it a scam or ensure some good came across it. It worked out. As we were pushing the guy who owned the hardware store came out and helped push the car, talking with the guy about his interview (which did actually happen). We got the guy some gas and he drove off. Hardware store guy said he was going to give the guy the job because "if he was desperate enough to drive from across town with no ride back to get this job, maybe he'll stay with it longer than the chuckle heads from the high school." To my knowledge he still works there to this day.

    I've said the same thing to lots of other people who have insisted on cash, or that their car was too far away, or other excuses. But I try to still offer it because maybe there is another guy like that one in the ihop parking lot.

    Enc on
  • Theodore FlooseveltTheodore Floosevelt proud parent of eight beautiful girls and shalmelo dorne (which is currently being ruled by a woman (awesome role model for my daughters)) #dornedadRegistered User regular
    I actually inadvertently ran a scam back in high school.

    My senior year, I played Dogberry in a production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' set in the antebellum south; I gave it my all and tried to make the comedy physical knowing that our audience wouldn't particularly understand the malapropisms, but the director reigned me in. The best joke I could muster was a sweat stain; in my first scene, it was barely visible around my neck, but with each progressive scene I was in, I would add more and more water back-stage until the front of the shirt was completely saturated. My entrances would get laughs. The audience tracked the stain. I went off book one time, the last night of the show, when an actor also broke what we had rehearsed and ended up throwing a plate of cookies at the actor playing Leanato. On my entrance, I walked in, delivered my line, picked up a cookie off the stage, and began to eat it.

    That's neither here nor there - just me rambling.

    For our shows, we would put a banner out in front of the theater with the lead casts headshots on them. We had a photographer come in to do these headshots - our theater department took itself very seriously, and we usually pulled more money in than the football team, so it paid off - and I decided to have my picture taken in character. Smug, glancing up over my glasses with my head tilted down, and a half grin.

    A student saw the picture and said, "I would totally buy a shirt with that picture on it. But you'd have to put the word 'ACE' underneath."

    So I did that. I went to cafepress.com and I did a mockup of the shirt. I showed a few students, and before I knew it, I was taking pre-orders. With the money given - and a generous $5 markup on my part - I bought the shirts and distributed them to around 20 people. They all wore them whenever, and eventually, more and more people started looking to buy the shirts.

    I took a second round of pre-orders, this time, around 30 or so, but I ended up moving to New York a week ahead of schedule, so the shirts never came.

    I've made amends to the people on the pre-order list, either reimbursing them - this was almost 10 years ago - or doing good deeds. Save for one girl; she pre-ordered an ACE shirt and never got it. When I moved back from New York with a glaring case of Overestimating My Abilities as a Writer and Disenfranchisement with the Boheim Lifestyle - she approached me in a Barnes and Noble.

    "I'm so sorry," I said. "I can either get you the shirt now, or I can give you your money back."

    "How about you take me out to dinner instead."

    I did. It fizzled after about 10 minutes. As it turns out, when you're a nebbish, neurotic man, the intrigue built around the stories you left behind don't usually coalesce with the reality.

    -

    Two more stories relating to the ACE shirt.

    A group of Freshman, my senior year, had... become sort of a fan club. They made up the majority of the first and only round of orders. And to celebrate my moving to New York, they coordinated an ACE Friday; what was to be a once a month event where they would wear the shirt to celebrate the fact that I had gone on to other things.

    The first ACE Friday, I get a panicked call from my mother.

    Apparently, the administration had thought this was some sort of memorial tribute and that I had killed myself shortly after leaving the state. Seeing a swarm of Sophomores roaming the halls, all wearing a shirt with my face plastered on it was apparently eerie and disconcerting, and the administration took it to mean that the worst had happened.

    ACE Friday's never happened again.

    -

    I was telling this story to my roommate as we were driving to see Interstellar; my Dad was treating, and my brother was meeting us there.

    "You're so full of shit," she said, as we were standing with my Dad, tickets in hand, waiting for my brother to show up.

    "What's the shit he's full of?" he said, appearing phantomlike from behind a pillar.

    "This whole ACE shirt thing."

    My brother stared at me for a second, unbuttoned his overshirt, to reveal the ACE shirt serving as an undershirt.

    It should also be noted that although he and my father did not coordinate, they both showed up wearing the same purple hued button up tucked into jeans.

    -

    I was also the mascot for a nationally ranking laser-tag team based on my Senior ID picture, but that's a story for another day.

    this is just a fantastic post

    mal i would read ace and other essays on acelife

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  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited December 2014
    A friend of mine once got approached with a "I'm out of petrol, I have no money but I can give you this jewelry to sell if you give me cash" scam. He argued the guy's price down, gave him a bit of money, took the jewelry to be valued and ended up making about a twenty percent profit. Life isn't supposed to work like that.

    Tube on
  • I ZimbraI Zimbra Worst song, played on ugliest guitar Registered User regular
    I went through a period of my life where I would buy pretty much any rap CD that someone tried to sell me on the street. I bought a lot of bad shit, one or 2 blank CD-Rs, and like 1 legitimately good CD.

    Working in college bookstores meant I saw all kinds of different scams that involved selling stolen books. Most of them were your average crackhead that either snatched a backpack from the library or a couple of books from one of our competitors. Occasionally there would be more interesting ones, though. One was a professor who got 2 cases of review copies of the textbook he'd written free from the publisher, who then brought them to our backdoor and sold them for cash. We just covered up the "REVIEW COPY - NOT FOR SALE" with a sticker and undercut the store across the way. There were the people who managed to steal a couple of pallets of nursing books who then drove around the country with them, selling a few at every college bookstore they came across. My boss at one place would sell books under the table to distributors and then pocket the cash. Or the fraternity kid with a pill problem that stole all of his frat brothers' books and sold them, a plan which pretty quickly unraveled.

  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    Tube wrote: »
    A friend of mine once got approached with a "I'm out of petrol, I have no money but I can give you this jewelry to sell if you give me cash" scam. He argued the guy's price down, gave him a bit of money, took the money to be valued and ended up making about a twenty percent profit. Life isn't supposed to work like that.

    why'd he have to take the money to be valued, they put that right on there

  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    Weaver wrote: »
    #pipe wrote: »
    There's one dude who sits on busy downtown street corners in the winter with his shirt off and his hand out, shivering and rocking. Often he'll have a sign that says like "HUNGRY, HOMELESS, DESPERATE, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY"

    While walking home a couple times I've seen him polishing off a big mac and large coke, pulling off his coat and shirt and stashing them in an alley before talking up the position and commencing the shivering.

    Everyone who's been to PAX knows Dick's, right? The walk up burger place? It's real popular for panhandling, mostly been a couple of the same people the whole time I've lived here but they can't stake the place out all day long so you do get some new people once in a while. There was this huge seven foot tall-ish guy who had moved in there from his old spot outside the grocery store. Built like an NFL defensive player, really loud booming voice, wearing sweat pants and hoody, he'd have a sign that was always way too small to read unless you were right up by him, and when people would be passing right in front of him he'd bellow out "SPARE CHANGE, GUY?! like if Brian Blessed was asking for your spare coins.

    Now this Dick's is almost the half-way point between our apartment and the building where Nuka works and where my gym is, so I pass it all the time. This guy is almost always there now. Every day, SPARE CHANGE, GUY?!

    One morning I take a slightly different route walking to the gym because I'm playing a cell phone game that uses GPS coordinates and I wanted to hit up some different points, and I see this guy step off a bus, wearing regular, clean clothes, big backpack, looking at his ipad with some big headphones on. A week or so later we go out for late night burgers and he's up there in his panhandling outfit, booms his line at us, and my stupid mouth just blurts out back at him, "SPARE IPAD, GUY?!" and I immediately regretted everything and thought I was about to get squished into the sidewalk.

    He didn't say anything at all, got our burgers and left, haven't seen him there since.

    I'm just going to add that Weaver's not wrong to characterize this guy as homeless Brian Blessed

    dude is loud as fuuuuuuck, I've actually given him money just out of shock

  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    "SPARE CHANGE, DUDE"

    "aaaahhh jesus alright what just HAPPENED"

  • I ZimbraI Zimbra Worst song, played on ugliest guitar Registered User regular
    Oh, and I forgot about my favorite panhandler: the woman that was at the bus stop begging change for a bus pass on Monday, and on Tuesday was at the same bus stop trying to sell me bus passes.

  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    I was once involved (through work, so don't credit me with any kind of charitable intent) with a project that supplied homeless people with luxury items that people no longer used. Some things I remember giving because I wanted to throw them out were a phone (probably two years out of date), a stereo and a watch. I'm pretty sure similar projects exist in a lot of places, and it's not absurd to me that someone would donate an old iPad or smart phone. I wonder how many of the people who received donations through that project were verbally assaulted by people for daring to own a luxury item.

    Side note: I have heard countless anecdotes about the Hidden Rich People Who Make A Killing Begging On The Streets and have yet to see any hard evidence of it ever actually happening, ever. I hear a lot of stories of genuine homeless people freezing to death in a lonely place though. Maybe they're not begging right. I hear the money is really good.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited December 2014
    On the terrible side of things, Orlando has a new form of panhandling that started up very recently. A guy will be on the swale or concrete median peddling (like the firemen do during donation drive season) only his sign says:

    "Will twerk for $1"

    And the people doing this are getting money like fucking crazy.

    Enc on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    I think it's easier to construct urban myths that allow us to dismiss the suffering of the homeless than it is to face the dawning horror of how disgustingly out of proportion the wealth of even the Really Poor to the Most Poor is, let alone the relatively well-off with access to internet connections and video game consoles.

  • LiiyaLiiya Registered User regular
    I heard somewhere that one of the best things the homeless can be supplied with is a mobile phone and a charity was aiming to do so, because without one they can't be contacted for job interviews or housing schemes that can help them get out of their situation.

  • Speed RacerSpeed Racer Scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch scratchRegistered User regular
    my general feeling on someone asking me for money is that there are four possible outcomes:

    1. they are in need and i give them money.
    2. they are in need and i refuse to give them money that i could have afforded to give them.
    3. they are running a scam and i give them money.
    4. they are running a scam and i refuse to give them money.

    #1 is a good thing to do that everyone should do given the opportunity. #2 is an extraordinarily shitty thing to do. If you do #3 then you're a sucker, but you haven't lost very much as a result since we're talking about money that you're willing to completely write off. If you do #4 then you avoided a negligible amount of inconvenience which, i guess, good for you?

    the risk/reward balance just doesn't add up in a way that justifies not giving change to someone. If the person is a scammer, then the worst case scenario is you get tricked out of a couple bucks. If the person is in need, then the worst case scenario is you actively chose to deny someone even a modicum of assistance. I'll take being a sucker over being a greedy selfish jerk any day of the week.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Tube wrote: »
    Side note: I have heard countless anecdotes about the Hidden Rich People Who Make A Killing Begging On The Streets and have yet to see any hard evidence of it ever actually happening, ever. I hear a lot of stories of genuine homeless people freezing to death in a lonely place though. Maybe they're not begging right. I hear the money is really good.

    I've heard plenty of real, confirmed stories of college students doing things around campus that make it to the student conduct board. Quite a few of them have well off families but end up so poor through terrible life choices that they are near starving and rely on that money for food. Not really the same, but the amount of students who end up without food because of textbooks, binge drinking parties, and overpriced housing is pretty tragic.

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