I've noticed a trend lately. Businesses asking for money. Specifically certain businesses like bookstores and such. I understand why. Times are tough. They're small businesses, they maybe didn't buy the right insurance to cover for certain catastrophes or whatnot... but what I wonder is this: can we all ask for money? Can I raise money for an apartment? I've been struggling and getting nowhere for a long time. Can I ask for people to donate art for my cause and raise money because my landlady is going to kick me out because she wants to gut the place and raise the rent? Can I ask for 100,000 for all of my health bills? Can I ask for money because I got in a car accident?
Okay, okay, I'll stop. Am I sounding heartless? I feel like families and individuals are going through their own things and people lost their homes and they're not putting up webpages asking for new homes. Businesses fail. Or are supposed to. That's what happens. We're supposed to help people first. Maybe I"m wrong about all of this. I'd like to hear from others about this because I'm sort of working it out in my mind still....
HI,
ReplyDeleteLong time no hear or talk...in case you look at this. People do ask for money...like once in a CHinese restaurant on the UES, they had a tip jar for the ladies' room supplies. Huh? I always see tip jars in places like Dunkin' DOnuts and other places...bodegas and bakeries. My favorite tip jar was in Harvard Sq. at a cafeteria sytle restaurant in the 1970's, Cardullo's or Cardello's (and earlier, I'm sure!) that read "Tipping is not a city in CHina". Ok. Then I started seeing them in various places. THen of course, there are the signs and people on the street all over with a story. I have a favortie there too. A man on Park Ave had a really long cardboard box he was lying down in on the middle section, with the flowers, you know the islands in the middle of Park Ave., he had an old fashioned phone with no wire attached to anything of course and said to me " hey, it's for you!" Didn't ask for money, just had a quirky sense of humor and irony!!! You can always try to ask for money for anything...like the people that were on the news in the 1980's who dressed up and asked for money to go home to Westchester; their wallet had been "stolen". But they were scam artists and of course got $10 bills from empathetic commuters. THe news camera went back to the apt. where the scammers lived and saw stereos and all sorts things they bought with their day's work of begging. Can you deliver a believable story?
I get ya! Where's the limit? Is there one?
M
Believe me, I'm all too aware of people asking for money! I get it on a daily basis. But it's usually for a dollar or two. I remember once in the city a guy asked me for cash and he thought when I said I don't have change that I meant I don't have change for a 20 so he proceeded to pull out dollars as change and by accident one hundred dollar bills blew all over the street! I said, "Um... do you need help picking that up?" and then I think I walked away. I remember another time a guy asked us girls for money outside a restaurant and we said no but my friend offered him food and he admitted that he wasn't really homeless... he just wanted cash and that he has a nice pad, etc. Then he asked me out on a date. Gross!
ReplyDeleteBut what I'm talking about is a new thing: businesses asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars. People have always bummed for change but businesses have never asked for huge amounts of cash before... and during the storm that just happened I didn't see anyone asking for a new house!