Here's the line outside the food pantry yesterday, at about 9 a.m.
We were open for the first time in three weeks, so were expecting a good crowd, and we got one.
It's easy to tell the people who are there for the first time: they are so grateful. One guy was almost in tears and insisted on shaking my hand. That's actually an improvement on the old lady who kisses my hand every month. Then there are other people.
We get lots of donations of food from people who are making space in their cupboards for things they'll actually eat. These go into an odds-and-ends bin, and we used to let people take one item out of the bin, in addition to the bags of groceries we hand out.
A couple of months ago we passed out green recyclable shopping bags to everybody, and somebody thought it might be a good rule to only let people who bring those bags back take something out of the bin. It's turned out to be not such a good idea, but it's the rule right now.
Yesterday I had to deal with some guy who was incensed about the rule. Ignore the fact that I just handed him five bags of free groceries; we were all idiots for keeping him from picking out a 7-year-old can of mushrooms.
As Linus would say (or was it Charlie Brown?): I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
By the way, isn't that a great house in the background?
No comments:
Post a Comment