Pan handling is a crime. It's also annoying.
It's been going on as long as people have been on the planet however. (Beggars and theives, or whores and the world's "oldest" profession did not just start yesterday.)
At least the whores are intertaining. (Yikes, flame on!)
A few years ago, I was selling radio advertising. (Like 15 years ago.) Anyway, this one account I worked with owned hotels in the area. I had noticed a family of vagabonds living out of a van, and pan-handling for money with signs at busy intersections. (You know the ones, "Help us, we are from *Whereever* and need to get home, your money will help buy us gas and food for the trip home" or whatever the latest plea of the day is.)
They would sit there with the mom holding the dirty little kids, the dad holding the sign, and all of them looking forlorn and near death...
So, I pull into the hotel parking lot, and see the van there... Wow, how nice of these people to give this family a place to stay over night...
So, I go inside and meet with the gal who owns the hotels, and mention how nice it was of here to offer them a place to stay....
She starts laughing, almost falls off her chair and tells me they paid cash for the hotel room, and that she can't wait till they leave.
Says for me to follow here. She looked outside, and says, "OK, they are gone, so we can take a peek..." She grabs the master key, and we walk over to the room where the van is parked....
She looks around again, says "Housekeeping" loudly and then knocks on the door. No body answers, so she opens up the room, and waives for me to enter while she watches the door.....
The room is a disaster. There are cans of food open on the floor, partially eaten then dumped into piles with plastic forks and spoons still sticking out of them. Flies are everywhere. It stinks beyond discription. She says that cleaning the room will be nearly impossible, she might have to replace the carpets and beds.
There are watermellons split open, and only the hearts eaten out, the rest was scattered around the room, or smeared onto the walls. It was disgusting, and clearly these people were well fed, and not shy of cash either.
We left back to the office, and the owner told me they had a nice Caddy they drove when they were not dressed in rags and begging for food/money. These people had been in this hotel for 3 weeks. It was only getting worse every day she said. (More dirty food, and the room was being trashed.)
Said the worst part was she told them that to stay, they had to pay her a 500.00 cleaning deposit, and she hoped they would leave, but NO, they just whipped out the money and handed it over!!
Short on cash? Starving? Nope, this is how they make money, and from what she could tell, they made quite a bit of it.
So much for the needy...
