Today, while walking, I ran into two people who needed something. In both cases I was listening to music, but since I tend to get stopped to ask for direction fairly often I noticed them and didn't really mind.
The first person was a middle-aged man, standing near the Kabuki restaurant (near the Islands/etc on Foothill and Rosemead), while I was on my way to the dentist. He wanted to know if there was a Motel 6 nearby. Caught me off-guard, as I don't think that's ever been asked before. I'd already guessed he was someone who was having lunch at Kabuki and stepped outside for a smoke. I tend to do this with everyone I see. Try to figure out why they are there, what they are doing, etc. No idea how accurate it is, though in this case I very much doubt my initial guess. Anyways, I pointed him towards Colorado Blvd, which tends to have most of the hotels in Pasadena, though I don't recall ever seeing a Motel 6 here. Okay, that was odd, I still am not quite sure why someone would ask about a motel while smoking a cigarette outside a restaurant, but I was nearly late for the dentist appointment so I didn't stop to find out. (Sometimes I wish I traveled more when I didn't have anywhere to be. It'd be a whole lot easier to stop and talk to people who might be interesting.)
The second encounter was a bit more odd. I was in the parking lot in front of Best Buy (the one on Foothill), walking up to the Petsmart to get stuff for the rats. A big honking white Range Rover slows up and a lady on the passenger side (with an open window) starts talking to me. Okay, it's going to be directions somewhere for sure. On any walk of over a mile total, at least one person will ask me for directions, on average. Wrong again! She explains that she is traveling to Anaheim to see a friend/relative, along with a kid (pointed at in the back seat, but I couldn't see due to tinted windows) and boyfriend. (I didn't pay attention to that part, I was trying to figure out how one gives directions to Anaheim. I had it boiled down to "go south, you'll run into signs", when it becomes clear it's not directions she wants, but money for gas. I found that really odd. She offered to give me her name and number to repay me, but as I rarely carry any cash it was a moot point. (I had 1$ in quarters and four metro bus tokens on me at that point, the quarters being if I needed to take a foothill transit bus back, as they don't take the metro tokens anymore.) I'm never quite sure what to say to people who want money, and in this case it was very weird. The combination of giant gas guzzling cartruck thing and them needing money for gas, and not only that, but cruising around a parking lot (ie, using up their gas) while trying to get cash, was a bit much for me. Still, this is always a difficult problem for me, as I tend to feel like I should be sharing money if people ask, even though that makes it harder for myself.
2 comments:
It seems that you handled this stuff fine.
My main hope for those kinds of situations is to try to end the "conversations" (with a possibly loose use of the term) as quickly as possible without inciting anything. My tendency is to find such things not just odd but also creepy, which makes me want to be somewhere else.
Mr. Motel 6 sounds pretty shady.
As for the Range Rover, I could easily see running that as a scam in which you get $10-20 from someone, then move on to the next big-box parking lot. But I could also see it being for real--a lot of people are in dire financial straits these days, and they might not have the ability to buy gas even on credit (thus making interest-free loans from strangers in parking lots especially attractive).
Whether or not it's a scam, there's a good reason to solicit from the car rather than on foot: the presence of the car suggests the ability to make the promised repayment, whereas on foot they'd look like just another panhandler.
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