Was in Greggs yesterday for my Coffee . An (obvious) homeless / rough sleeper guy came in and bought a coffee and a 4 pack of doughnuts and paid for it with lots and lots of loose change. Good on him I thought, at least this is maybe one person who when he is asking strangers for "spare change for a cuppa" then he maybe means it.
He was leaving in front of me and I saw him grab two filled baguettes from the fridge shelf and then stand by the little table to pour some sugar into his coffee. I could see that the staff had also seen him grab these.
I approached him and said to him not to be stupid to steal them and he said he was going to pay for them. Obviously he wasn't so I took them off him and put them back in the fridge saying to him that they had to be kept chilled.
He left muttering various expletives at me.
I must admit after this I actually felt really guilty for stopping him. Maybe it was my retail background just kicking in and stopping a shoplifter but the guy was obviously sleeping rough and that could have set him up for the day. I could have bought him the bread myself and I would maybe have done if the guy had not launched a tirade of expletives at me? And of course you could argue that it would have been no difference to Greggs with the money they have.
What should I have done?
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>> What should I have done?
none of your business*, let the shop deal with it.
*if he was about to rape the fat sausage roll baker at knifepoint, thats another matter of course.
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I don't think it was up to you to take the bread from him. The staff had noticed, so it was their job. On the other hand, the fact that you intervened may have prevented him from ending up in court. I don't think there's a right answer except to do what comes naturally and you did that. I don't think you should feel guilty.
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You did the "right thing" Bobby, it's an awful place to be not having enough to buy food but at least you stopped him from getting into more bother. I make a habit of at least once a week, buying an extra sandwich when I get my own and giving it to a random beggar. Not sure why, just seems an ok thing to do.
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The prefer cheap cider to sandwiches.
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I'm sure you're right, but a sandwich might do a little bit of good. I don't over think it frankly. Just feels like a thing I want to to do from time to time.
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Good on you Humph, I would like to be in your shoes but I feel that I am very judgemental.
I have actually done a lot of reading and research re homeless issues and there are a million and one reasons why someone ends up homeless or sleeping rough. Note they may have some refuge that they can sleep in overnight but they are still homeless.
Many obviously turn to drink and drugs when they see no way out of their plight but you would be surprised what proportion of these were just dealt a bad hand and ended up in the circumstances.
In the area of Glasgow that I work, the vast majority of the "beggars" that you see are Eastern Europeans, mostly Romanian and there are many that are part of organised gangs. So in my head they all get branded the same and I wouldn't give them the time of day.
However, that is not actually fair on the others.
Re the Greggs staff, 2 out of 3 were young lassies, if that had been my daughter I would have hoped a male customer would have stepped in to help them.
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Perhaps there was a little arrangement going on - tramp comes in every day, buys a coffee and doughnuts, and they turn a blind eye to the sandwiches.
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I did think the same, as the OP said no-one moved, staff wise, stranger things happening in the world.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Sun 29 Mar 15 at 20:34
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>> Perhaps there was a little arrangement going on - tramp comes in every day, buys
>> a coffee and doughnuts, and they turn a blind eye to the sandwiches.
I have known stuff like that happen.
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If it's end of day sandwiches are only going one way..
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Knowing someone who was sleeping rough through alcoholism (a professional person who was holding down a high level job before and since) trust me giving food is a good move. He's told me that at one time he was eating his own vomit and drinking his own pee at one time to get a hit. I think Bobby's beggar would have been at the receiving end of a RAK from me. Thinking on the staff may have been scared of tackling him, which no doubt working either at or near minimum wage standing back was probably a very sensible option.
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You did the right thing BobbyG. The employees in Greggs were probably young lassies and/or on minimum wage and thought that intervening was above their pay scale.
Having owned several retail businesses , and having both staff & customers steal from me, I do not turn a blind eye to such goings on. Luckily for him it was not my Exex. She would have kicked the legs from under him and poured the coffee in his ear. And she was petite.
With attitude
M&S training she told me
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>> You did the right thing BobbyG.
+1
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Furthermore, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, I often help people sleeping rough. Not foreign beggars, who stand out a mile, especially the organised gangs that really wind me up. I have been known to buy a cheap pizza, cuppa, and a handful of Bonios to give to the unfortunates sitting cross legged in a doorway on a manky sleeping bag.
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>>................... to give to the unfortunates sitting cross legged in a doorway on a manky sleeping bag.
>>
There is one of them that sits by the ticket machine in a local car park, regular users know that he parks his car in the same car park.
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Is it a Lancer? Quite good, allegedly, for transporting mangy old dogs ( plural).
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>> Is it a Lancer? Quite good, allegedly, for transporting mangy old dogs ( plural).
Manky old dogs are very good for begging. I let a poppy seller look after fifi while I popped into a shop. He sold more poppies in that 5 minutes than the previous hour.
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Well, that's Afghanistan for you
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You sure it wasn't S&M training?
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Being homeless, by the standards of a person with a home, is a miserable existence.
In order to be able to cope you have to change your perspective and outlook to stop it feeling like a miserable existence and driving you further down emotionally.
Trouble is, once you've changed your perspective and outlook in that way, the drive to get a home through a job has gone.
Then, as part of your emotional survival, you're prepared to lower most of your standards. From washing to stealing.
It takes a shock, or an amazing bit of luck, to get you out of it.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sun 29 Mar 15 at 23:31
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When I patrolled the city centre nearly 50 yrs ago we had none of today's beggars. Most were prop[er tramps, dossers..we used to call them. Some slept in gent's toilets and others in the Sally Army hostel if they could get in.
All of them were lushes......mostly on Jake.....a mix of meths and water. Looked like Pernod & lemonade but made you blind. Very few had money to buy 'trampagne ' ( cider ).
SWM to be and me used to make a load of corned beef butties at Christmas and seek out the regulars. One, Ginger Woodward, had been a Desert Rat and had the medals on his ex Army greatcoat. An educated and interesting guy. Another used to wash in the public gents and make his way to Lewis's store where they had a blow heater above the doors. He's stand there in his trollies and dry himself and his kit.
A couple of regular ladies knocked around..they hated each other but one, the elder, whose name I forget, was a lovely old dear in her 70s. We used to arrest her for being drunk and incapable regularly to give her a warm night's sleep and a breakfast. She got fined 5 shillings in the morning which the officer paid for her out of his court overtime. When I last dealt with her, sometime around 1968, she had well over 550 similar convictions.
I recall being called to the old benefit office on Aytoun Street where an African man was threatening everyone with a knife. He was totally naked ! After disarming him and throwing him in the Black Maria, I noticed he had a sort of ' second willy ' growing out of his belly button area..about 4 inches long and sticking out horizontally......I don't know what that was, I had no intention of finding out ! Lud will know...as an experienced observer of Africa !
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An untidy job by the midwife, if any, when he was born I would think. A lot of people are born entirely without professional help, not just in Africa. But ask Lygonos in case he doesn't agree, if he can escape from Zero's clutches for a moment.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Mon 30 Mar 15 at 01:37
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Not all shoplifters are poverty stricken inadequates. I've seen several very well dressed and affluent looking 'lifters' performing. A sad reflection on me, two of them did the dirty in off licences.
On one occasion - close to Xmas - the shop had cases of wine stacked on the spare floor space with one or two loose bottles positioned around them. The shop was busy, with just one assistant. I watched a respectable looking lady pretending to browse the bottles, pop two into her leather bag, and take a third to the counter and pay for it.
Another time, I was in a different off licence just behind a chap at the counter who bought two bottles of whisky. Off he went, and as I'm being served he rushed back in and explained that his wife (in the car) didn't want those, could he have another brand. Duly exchanged, small cash refund. A couple of days later (as a regular) I was back in the shop and the owner told me that he'd resold one bottle and that the customer returned it saying that the seal had been broken. Turned out that they were full of whisky coloured water.
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>>Not all shoplifters are poverty stricken inadequates. I've seen several very well dressed and affluent looking 'lifters' performing
In my supermarket days, I often felt that if I wanted to go out and shoplift, I would do it whilst wearing a smart suit. Without doubt, any shop staff would think twice about stopping you dressed like that fearing the repercussions if it turned out to be a lawyer or whatever. You didn't have the same fear or doubt with someone dressed in joggers and hoodie.
Talking of which, one day whilst I was working at Safeway, I was on my day off and went into my local Safeway. I was dressed in the aforementioned joggers, hoodie and baseball cap.
I was followed round the shop by the plain clothes security guard, the same guy who had made 5 stops in my own shop the day before with me!!
I could have warned him earlier rather than letting him follow me round ....
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I couldn't be a shoplifter, I do not have criminal balls.
I only have to do something slightly wrong and I look/feel guilty, as well as paranoid feelings that every policeman within 100 miles is staring at me.
I get stopped all the time in Customs and one time an Officer in Japan, having searched me for the second time, said he found it amazing that anyone that nervous and guilty looking could actually be innocent.
That said, shoplifting always seemed a bit dumb to me. The risk / reward ration is not exactly up there, is it?
If someone suggested to me a crime that if I got away with I'd get £100m and if I did get caught it was 1yr in jail, I might think about it.
The risk / reward for a bank job seems unacceptable - £10,000 versus 5 years. And shoplifting at £1.00 versus a criminal record just seems outright daft.
A friend who has an expensive goods shop in New York told me that they always look at the watch. If someone comes in wearing an expensive and genuine watch, then they are unlikely to be criminal, at least at a level that he worries about.
Its always seemed a likely explanation to me since I am generously described as a tatty dresser at best, but I do wear expensive watches - and I get let in places.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 30 Mar 15 at 20:47
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At my first student get to know you all sit in a circle thing, the tutor asked how many of us had shoplifted at some point as kids. I was embarrassed to discover that not only was I the only one who hadn't, as it had genuinely never crossed my mind, but that all the others point blank refused to believe it and thought I was some sort of weirdo.
Of course, they were right, I am, but they didn't know that yet.
Incidentally, I still haven't nicked anything. Yet.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Mon 30 Mar 15 at 20:51
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>> embarrassed to discover that not only was I the only one who hadn't, as it
>> had genuinely never crossed my mind, but that all the others point blank refused to
>> believe it and thought I was some sort of weirdo.
Woolies. Everyone I knew back in the day, including me, nicked stuff from woolies. Even stuff you didn't really want.
If the subject ever comes up in my age group, and it does funnily enough, everyone almost without doubt says the same thing.
Woolies.
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Woolies
Used to have a shop in Sauchiehall St in Glasgow. Had a door entrance in Renfrew St as well. Which was at the end of the sweetie aisle.
Myself and several of my school mates used to go in one door, run down the aisle randomly grabbing sweets, and run out the other door.
I remember my cousin confessing that when he was young he was dared by his mates to go into the local shop and steal something. Came out with a tin of Vim......
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>> Woolies
>>
>> Used to have a shop in Sauchiehall St in Glasgow. Had a door entrance in
>> Renfrew St as well.
>>
Ah the joys of a Glasgow childhood, remember it well
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Not sure about the watch test. I don't associate flashy expensive watches with honesty, more the reverse really.
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>> I don't associate flashy expensive watches with honesty, more
>> the reverse really.
Neither would I. But I didn't say flashy.
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Quite right Mark.
Last edited by: R.P. on Mon 30 Mar 15 at 21:59
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l woulddn't know a flashy / expensive watch if I saw one!
Don't actually wear a watch anynmore, surrounded by mobile phone, car clock, PC clock, wall clock don't need another reminder of the time!
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Yes, don't need anything else to adjust when clocks go forward either. I've already got eleven pendulum clocks and five pocket watches as well as all the usual electronic gizmos and gadgets. Don't usually wear a wrist watch although I have a cheap Lorus if I need one.
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>> l woulddn't know a flashy / expensive watch if I saw one!
>>
>> Don't actually wear a watch anynmore, surrounded by mobile phone, car clock, PC clock, wall
>> clock don't need another reminder of the time!
Thats a major problem with the Apple iWatch plan. There is a significant proportion - read most of them - growing up who don't wear a watch and wouldn't think of it.
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It's strange isn't it. The wrist watch is really going out of fashion with younger people who simply use their phones. Wrist watches are destined to be see as antiques rather like pocket watches are now. I too see no future for the Apple Watch.
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Cheers guys - does lack of watch mean I am young, hip cool and trendy??
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>> Cheers guys - does lack of watch mean I am young, hip cool and trendy??
Nooo, It means you are an old get who is trying to look hip cool and trendy
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>> Not sure about the watch test. I don't associate flashy expensive watches with honesty
I wear a plastic Swatch (an excellent device that keeps impeccable time), with one Indian silver bracelet, a broad African aluminium one, three twisted copper jobs and a rubber Help for Heroes thingy behind it. They jingle a bit sometimes. My clothes are extremely scruffy and my white shoes well filthy. I am nearly always unshaven, and believe me a week's white beard looks pretty appalling on me.
I never have the slightest problem getting in anywhere. It's the posh accent, arrogant expression and confidence that do it.
I have to see the doctor tomorrow afternoon God help me. That means a shower and shave and clean clothes all the way. Haven't been bleeding lately so they may spare me the nyash-probing investigation. I do hope so because I hate that.
I once stole a bottle of milk off a doorstep in Portobello Road. Oddly enough some friends later rented the flat it was the door to and I lived there for a while.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 31 Mar 15 at 00:09
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>> I never have the slightest problem getting in anywhere.
That isn't quite true I now remember. I was once turned away and snooted by a Cork Street tailor when I was toying with the idea of getting them to make me a suit. Had to make do with Cecil Gee, much cheaper and a bit flash but perfectly all right.
Fact is I've always despised tailors since I was very young. I have the attitude of Olivier's Richard III, who remarked jokily that he would 'entertain some score or two of tailors' to make him more marriageable looking.
I suppose they understand instinctively, even when you're polite to them, like dogs or cats.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 31 Mar 15 at 13:56
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An ex-colleague of mine back in the late 80s, had worked for Cecil Gee in the 70s I suppose.
He once told me his tailor's definitions of "stout" and "portly" but of course I forgot what they were. He's still a friend and I asked him to remind me recently. He denied all knowledge and said he must have made it up. He's still a natty dresser.
Just saying.
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>> He's still a natty dresser.
>> Just saying.
Oh dear... 'natty', yuck. But no offence to your buddy Manatee. Stands to reason that some tailors must be all right.
:o}
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>>That said, shoplifting always seemed a bit dumb to me. The risk / reward ration is not exactly up there, is it?
When I was in Sainsburys in Braehead there used to be a guy who would constantly shoplift the CD/DVD aisle. If he got caught, police were called, another pending charge was added to his list and then at some point he was released. Occasionally at the weekend he would be kept in.
Would get a fine in court, he would come back , steal more to pay the fine.
I remember asking him was it not a vicious circle but he was quite happy with his lot. Got away with a helluva lot more stuff than what he was caught with. Not just from us.
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>> I noticed he had a sort of '
>> second willy ' growing out of his belly button area..about 4 inches long and sticking
>> out horizontally......I don't know what that was,
Was it a hernia?
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I was quite moved by Runfer's post, and in a mood for giving out some sandwiches.
But after this medical development to the thread I don't think I feel like food at the moment.
Sorry, rough sleeper.
:)
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When we lived in Spain there were always organised gangs of beggars sitting outside the entrances to supermarkets.
What gave them away was the identical messages, written by the same marker pens, on the same type of scruffy cardboard.
This on locations kilometres apart!
One would often see the gangmaster roll up in a car or small van, more or less surreptitiously, to collect the takings!
The southern Spanish are very generous to beggars - it seems to be in the Andalucian nature - so I bet these gangs, who were absolutely NOT Spanish, did pretty well.
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When I was a sprog PC, one of my 'beats' included Westminster Cathedral and we'd be expected to deal with the plethora of beggars that used to hang around o/s to catch the visitors (either there or the nearby McDonalds).
They'd get nicked for begging or drunkenness etc, be kept in custody for Horseferry Road Magistrates the next morning... be 'fined £5 or day in custody' and the 'day in custody' would be the time they'd spent in custody with us.
An utterly pointless exercise.
Anyway, to get to the point.. one of the regulars was a chap called Robert Reid, an educated, quick witted man who you could have a long conversation with and learn something.
He was Jockenese and had been a marine engineer, travelling all over the world. Very, very interesting man.
He told me once that his slide into living on the streets was due to the demon drink, a weary divorce and everything getting on top of him...and... he felt the street life, although it had its disadvantages, it also had advantages.
The way he saw it: he had no responsibilities, no bills, nothing really to worry about and there was tremendous camaraderie with his band of peers.
He used to come out with some cracking one liners at court, some received well.. and some not.
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>> street life, although it had its disadvantages, it also had advantages.
>> The way he saw it: he had no responsibilities, no bills, nothing really to worry about and there was tremendous camaraderie with his band of peers.
Up to a point, Lord Copper... but for me the disadvantages - cold, rain, filth and being harassed by policemen and busybodies - would vastly outweigh the advantages.
I doubt if I am alone in that. To be homeless and without resources is the stuff of nightmares.
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>>he had no responsibilities, no bills, nothing really to worry about and there was tremendous camaraderie with his band of peers.
He was one of the lucky ones then because, being a sowf lundener, I've seen some awful fights among dossers when, as my ole mum used say "the beer is in, the wit is out".
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>> He was one of the lucky ones then because, being a sowf lundener, I've seen
>> some awful fights among dossers when, as my ole mum used say "the beer is
>> in, the wit is out".
>>
That's very true, some of them would have some awful injuries.
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>> awful fights among dossers
I'd forgotten to mention the other toerags in my list of disadvantages... thanks for reminding me Perro.
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What a nice chap Humph is.
I used to bung beggars sometimes when in the Grove, more or less at random, not every time. They are few and far between where I live now, although you see them in the coastal towns a few miles away.
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I can imagine what happened in Greggs.
"Aaaye. Ahhl fekken keelyi yi fekken bazda. Yi fekken bazda. Dinni fekken titchmi yi fekken bazda. Ahhl fekken keelyi. Aaaye. Yi fekken bazda. Yi fekken bazda. Aaaye. Dinni fekken titchmi! Dinni fekken titchmi yi fekken bazda! Aaaye", said Bobby.
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V good. Did you write scripts for Rab C Nesbitt?
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BBD - this happened in a Greggs in Edinburgh.
I insist that you re-write that comment now in Edinburgin!! :)
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No problem Bobby, allow me...
"I say old chap, have a heart, bit low on the old funds at present, don't suppose you could see your way clear to a small advance?"
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Humph, you forgot to sing at the end of each phrase, ken like
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"'Av borond mi hoos doon! 'Av borond mi hoos doon!", cried Bobby.
(Twice)
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Homeless & shoplifting - Zero
