My fellow blogger friend MARIAs post about not trusting people who are begging for something has made me watch obvious beggars more closely.
I’ve been sitting here in this walmart lot all day creating eBay listings for the stuff I bought at the “mega-pick” yesterday. I’ve done 70 so far. It’s tedious and boring work but what work isn’t tedious & boring right?
Being here for the 4+ hours has given me the chance to watch these young scammers work their scam.
It’s a real basic, unimginative and almost effortless scam too. Simply put up a cardboard sign that says “OUT OF GASOLINE” on your car and just sit there looking as down-trodden and desparate as possible. Bare feet seems to really helps garner extra sympathy.
I think the worst part of this scam (for the scammers) is dealing with the boredom. But, maybe they’re used to just sitting there for hours on end, doing nothing.
So, how do I know they’re not REALLY out of gas? Because, I heard them drive in late last night (early this AM/). They were outside of their car talking loudly near 3-4 RVs with people inside trying to sleep. Tigger started barking and woke me up. I'm sure everyone in all the nearby RVs were awaken (awoken?) by the rude car dwellers.
The annoying bums couldn’t possibly have run out of gas right where they decided to spend the night... could they? Read on...
The car drove in. It wasn't pushed or coasted.
I watch this nice guy in a somewhat beat up 1980’s pickup truck, pull up and point to the back of his truck. In the truck bed was a full 5 gallon can of gas which he GAVE to these scammers. He had gone to a gas stations with his own gas can and gotten the bums gasoline. How amazing is that? What a nice guy. The generous guy in the old truck didn’t look like he could really afford to be giving away $20 worth of gas... but he did.
I'm thinking... "Great, they got some gas... now they'll be on their way and stop creating a spectacle here".
Nope!
They stuck around begging for a good 2-3 more hours... claiming to still be out of gasoline.
 |
| Still out of gas? Yeah sure! |
It got to be like grand central station around their car. People were coming in from every angle to hand them money and other free things. Here's the pictures that got deleted from this post a few days ago.
 |
| This guy gave money. You can see a bill in the bums hand. |
 |
| 2 cars stopping at the same time |
 |
| the woman on the right gave groceries and money. The one on the left, just money. |
 |
| FREE GROCERIES, GAS & MONEY?! ISN'T AMERICA GREAT! |
 |
| You can see the bag of poop falling off the rear tire... where they put it hours earlier. There ARE numerous trash cans in walmart parking lots. |
 |
| This is the thanks walmart gets for graciously allowing them to panhandle in their parking lot for a full day. A bag of dog poop. |
