Our Other Neighbors

I work in a coffee shop downtown on the weekends; I have for over a year now.  It’s a fun intersection at night (for some), weekend mornings are a brunch and study factory, and on a weekday morning it’s the routine stop for much of downtown’s businessfolk.  We get attorneys and the judges who rule over them, high school students and the teachers on their way to scold them, neighboring bar owners and their coffee-needy patrons.  We also get those who fit into neither of these categories, whose need for hot coffee or a spare danish in the morning has nothing to do with socialization or grande soy chai latte-fixes most other customers demand with specialized preparation.

It is our homeless customer base that drives so many wedges in the middle of our customers’ and employees’ love for our store.  On one hand, no one wants to refuse those in need a spare dollar or even a hot meal; on the other hand, giving tends to be more acceptable to the giver when it’s on a case-by-case basis and not due to intimidation or screaming.  (Also, too, is panhandling illegal and increasingly on the rise downtown, the subject of recent police department policy change.)

As I have been taught since a young age, charity is at its most fair and generous when the giver and the receiver know not of each other.  That way neither side can deviate from the want to give and the need to receive.  It’s hard to imagine this scenario in everyday life, where our homeless citizens campaign their crises in our face with varying degrees of volume and desperation.  Our homeless population’s crises are everybody’s problems, and it’s time that we address it with open arms and extended hands.

The regulars where I work are generally not allowed in the store, on store premises even, and have been asked repeatedly to leave.  It’s not to devalue them, so it is said, and it’s not to pretend they don’t need for what they ask.  Though as I agree that the inappropriate behavior of a select few is warrant enough for their removal, I can’t help but to wonder how many places have treated them similarly, and where they go once they huff off in anger.

I’m angry, too.  I’m not sure what their lives are like. I’m not in their shoes, if they’re lucky to have shoes.  But as much as I want to help I can only do what I can do—to our regulars I’m friendly with, I give some dollars when off the clock, I bring coffee when I go outside for my break, I give what I can.

One man, in particular, I find especially grateful.  His name is Arnold.  He is a skinny older man who never fails to ask us for coffee or baked goods, yet never quite gets mad when we can’t give (story policy, mind you, prohibits employees from such donations on the clock; we sneak where we can, but any offerings are generally given on our own time).  This isn’t to say I like him because he doesn’t give me guilt, but he walks the streets without expectation and with a kind smile.  He reminds me that charity need not be a troublesome or exasperated transaction for those who give.

Not everyone has it in them to do this.  Some are cynical or skeptical of where their dollars are going.  Others prefer to give goods rather than currency.  Either way, if they are in need they will ask for it.  Who am I to suggest they’re pulling my leg?

In the current issue of Block Club Magazine we have a Q and A with two local leaders in the homeless-helping community, Bill O’Connell at the Homeless Alliance of WNY and Sylvia Nadler at Compass House.  Both serve the community in ways that go unseen to most of us.  But both are doing their part.  Read their interviews and become inspired to see another side of the sad stories we walk past every day on our way to our morning coffee.

Posted by on 09/17 at 02:52 PM