Caveat - You may start to think badly of me for attacking the homeless as you begin to read this post, but please bear with me to the end...
Okay, let me paint you the picture of the poor little homeless guy I see occasionally on the way home...Aw... :(
At least once every couple of months this guy comes wandering up the train (in his pristine shell suit with his well cropped, if a little messy hair) and spits out exactly the same load of old rubbish, occasionally with slight embellishments, but 98% of the spiel always stays the same (like a call centre script) -
(Imagine, if you will, a slightly gravelly but cheeky cockney voice, with a pleading note)..
"Good afternoon Ladies and Gents, I'm very sorry for disturbing you. I don't know if you heard me embarassing myself further up the carriage, but I'm afraid I've been put in a rather awkward postion today. When I turned up at the Big Issue"...(a magazine that good homeless people can sell to earn a few bob)..."offices to pick up my copies I discovered that it had closed two hours early"...(It's always two hours! Why not go there two hours earlier?!!!)..."because of the football"...(that was this today's minor embellishment, usually someone is sick or there has been an accident)..."This means that I am now facing the very real possibility of having to sleep rough tonight, which I really don't want to have to do if I can help it, so I'm forced into humiliating myself in front of you good people to ask for just any small change you might have so I can get myself into a hostel tonight instead of looking forward to a night on the streets. Once again, I'm very sorry for disturbing you and I wish I didn't have to do this..."
Then follows the awkward silence, during which he tries to avoid my accusatory glare...oh yes...he knows I know he's bullshitting the good "Ladies and Gents"...inevitably several people hand him coins and notes to "Thank you, I really wish I didn't have to do this to you" or "Thank, you having a good day?"...then he gets off the train (always at London Bridge) with a cheery "Enjoy the rest of your journey", and waits for the next train leaving from platform 6 (no doubt to repeat his little performance all over again)...
Are you still thinking this is all rather unkind of me?
Lets do some maths...say he gets 6 quid per performance (about average from what I have observed), 2 performances per carriage , it takes him no more than 90 seconds to start the performance and collect his payment...there are trains running roughly every 6 minutes and at that time of day they are mostly 8 carriages in length. Assuming it takes about a minute to move from carriage to carriage that works out at about 32 minutes per train, factoring in a possible short wait to swap this still works out at almost 2 complete trains every 60 minutes)...Still with me?
This being the case I calculate that this guy earns somewhere in the region of £192 (tax free) per hour...!!!!! Keep that up for 7 hours (remember, this isn't exactly hard work!) and that's more than enough money to pay the rent on a nice little flat in the suburbs, with plenty of money left over for take away and beer!!
No wonder we only see him once every two months...on that kind of money he could spend a fair amount of time staying in the penthouse at the bloody Ritz!!
6 comments:
Ha ha!
My experience of people who beg for money is that they learn experiencially "what works" and "what doesn't work". They therefore tend to stick rigidly to the "what works" script, and this leads to them repeating the same sorry tale over and over, and when you hear it several times you wonder if they are having a groundhog day.
That said, homelessness is a serious condition. I find it better to avoid giving money to individuals (who might be spending the money unwisely) and rather donate to a charity that has a programme to effectively deal with the problem.
A few years ago a friend of mine said he does the opposite. He gives directly to the beggars "in order to cut out the middle-man". :-)
Obviously I'm in the wrong line of work....
We saw that guy!! He gave exactly the same speech when we were going back to London Bridge from Bluewater,lol,that was at least a year ago! I can't believe he's still doing that.. we said at the time he could get a job easily with public speaking skills like that, but I guess he's found a good earner already!
BigBlue - *definitely* the best way, donate to a homeless charity
Monsoonie - Hehe, that would tempt me to donate (a guy I know in London often takes one look at beggars and instead of giving them money takes them and buys them a McDonalds (I'll leave it up to your personal preference to decide if he is being good or evil... ;))
Nate - Right with you...I'm quitting in order to become a (and let me coin a term) "freelance roving orator venture capitalist" also...
Kipperfrog - NO...WAY...!!!
He's got to feed that crack habit somehow! ;)
When I was a student in London blokes like yours were two a penny on the underground in my experience. I suspect since 9/11 thats changed somewhat.
jHehehe... ;) That could well be it Dan Dare! Burns the whole lot up on rocks...but just imagine, he gets back off the Thameslink, disguards his fake accent and summons his limo back to the Ritz, changes out of his shell suit into his Armani siut, orders his usual from room service (lobster) , his PA calls up the high class escort agency and requests two young ladies very well aquianted with their A-Levels and for the bath to be filled with Moet and rose petals...
Post a Comment