It’s as if these situations seek me out.
Here I was at Trader Joe’s, doing a quick grocery run after a Zoom seminar, when a small, dark, middle-aged woman woman speaking some variation of English stops me. “Please, sir.” she says, and flashes a card with words written on it. “I am poor and hungry and have children,” it says.
That’s a first: a panhandler in a grocery store. I told her to wait a second and I dug in my wallet to find six bucks, which I gave to her. Then she showed me a basket of some kind of consumables. “Buy food?” she said. What, did she take credit cards?
I shook my head and left. But by the time I got to check-out, the scenario bothered me. Trader Joe’s has a hippie vibe, even a cultish vibe, so maybe panhandlers are welcome, but an in-store competitor seemed a bit over the line. I ultimately decided to blow the whistle on her, and told the store manager on duty that someone was peddling their own commodities in the store. My reasoning: if Trader Joe’s wants to allow that sort of thing out of fatal empathy, it’s their choice. But they at least should know about it.
I half expected the manager to say, “Oh, that’s just Gladys. She’s harmless.”
This ethics decision-making episode fell into my Golden Rule basket. If I was the store owner, I would want to know about Gladys, or whatever her real name was.
I’m still feeling guilty, however.
Ethics Alarms 
I had a similar experience last year in a Safeway store. In that case, the woman spoke passable English, so she didn’t resort to a card. She approached me with pretty much the same story, that she had kids to feed and no (or not enough) money. I was very put off by this approach, but I offered to buy her a few items if she would tell me which ones were most needed. We went back and forth, and I told her that I would buy a few items, but not her whole grocery list, and I also offered to give her the name and link to a local food bank that could help her further. She rejected my offers and walked off, leaving me feeling uncomfortable and a bit guilty. The whole experience was disturbing to me. I think that it was partly her assumption that I was someone who would happily foot the bill for her whole grocery cart, which she had been filling even knowing that she couldn’t afford it. Ultimately, I think it was a scam, much like the people who sometimes panhandle outside the grocery stores. Perhaps I have become too jaded, but I also don’t like feeling like an easy mark for those who cynically play on a person’s desire to be helpful.
You make me wonder if I misunderstood the woman and she was asking me to buy food for her. That’s not how it sounded to me; as she showed her basket and said, “You want to buy?”
Pro Tip: Panhandling is one more job that requires English skills.
I was once doing observations at a train station, and a woman approached me asking for money to buy a train ticket a few stop over. I went with her to the ticket machine, and bought her a ticket, and I could watch her expression drop as I did do. I asked which of several stations in that town, and she said any. I handed her the ticket, and I’m pretty sure she went inside to try to return it for cash (of course, the station didn’t even have a ticket counter, so…). Well, I was only out $7 dollars, and may or may not have helped someone out of pinch getting home.
Dear Jack,
I don’t think you need to feel guilty. Whatever the lady’s problem is, you are not hurting her in an unethical way. There is help for her if she needs it. Her tactic in the store is at odds with the customs and mores of the natives.
The panhandler wants you to feel guilty. Gladys (whatever her name is) wants you to feel guilty. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
We had a good conversation on this topic a year or two back, starting with
https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/05/11/the-student-and-the-homeless-man-a-cautionary-ethics-tale/
I wrote a number of comments, as did many others. It’s an issue that has intrigued and annoyed and provoked me for years. Fool that I am.
= – = – = – =
Somewhere in Proverbs in the Bible it says “Do not mock the poor” and also something along the lines of “Do not stop your ears to the cries of the poor.”
The more panhandlers we tolerate and/or support, the more panhandlers we are going to get.
I fall back on the concept of “The corporal works of mercy.” The corporal acts of mercy are available to the lady without her practicing the tactic you encountered.
Thanks for reading.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
Thank you for finding that, Charles. Saved me making essentially the same rant I made two years ago. Whew!