Saturday, May 17, 2008

I am Quite Charitable

I do not think I have ever fully addressed my feelings regarding homeless people. I have never been one to pass up the opportunity of being charitable. Therefore, when a homeless person asks me if I can spare some change, I generally can and will. The truth is I hate carrying around any change as in dimes, pennies, nickels and quarters.

That being said, I am a bit confused as to why these people are homeless and I am going to play with a few possibilities. One of these possibilities, and I have heard this excuse from multiple people that are not homeless, is that they can not work in an office. This is what I would say to this excuse: “Look, do you bloody think anyone likes working in an office? I mean there is an entire series making fun of working in an office. I do not EVEN have a cubicle. All I want from life is a god damn office at this point.” The other excuse I have heard is that “I have a drug addiction.” Well, the last time I checked there were no crack-cocaine trees. I mean if there were, do you think there would be ads about saving trees what have you? No, because no one would cut down a bloody crack-cocaine tree. So this is my response to this excuse; “Gosh, I sure wish crack-cocaine was not so god damn expensive, but it is. In order to support your addiction, you are going to have to suck it up and work in an office. By the by, I do not know anyone who does not have a drug addiction and they all freakin work in an office.”

I guess the reason I am a bit sensitive right now is because I have been temping for quite some time. Really, I am not sure that the “working class” (I say working in the sense that you have a job, not in the sense that you are blue collar) is aware of what is possibly capable of temping. I am fairly certain that some of the people I have met in my walk of life have at one point been homeless. In fact, it is entirely possible that some of my co-workers are still homeless. And what did they do about it? They went to a temping agency and were placed on various floors of companies in conference rooms and are working on some ridiculous unnecessary project. I am fairly certain that this is the way of companies giving back to the community; they invent projects for homeless people and garbage cans.

So next time, someone asks me if I can spare some change, I am going to reply “I can do better than spare you some change. I can give you the number of a temping agency.”

1 comment:

MBR said...

Something with which to commiserate...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/fashion/18layoff.html?_r=1&ref=style&oref=slogin