I may be heartless but I still have my $20
"When presented with tales of woe and asked for relatively small sums that will help set things to rights, only the very rarest among us will as a matter of course turn down direct appeals for help. The vast majority will hear the unfortunates out, then make their decision to help or not based on the believability of the stories."
I remember the first time this scam was tried on me ... I was 13 and spending the summer at Nerd Camp on the Northwestern Campus ... my friends totally bought it and I called them dumbasses and threatened to call the cops, running off the con guy. Even at 13 I was unwilling to help the "needy."
posted by TheAmber at 11:11 AM
4 Comments:
Huh?!
You know the "I just need $20 for a cab ... my girlfriend is having our baby! Can you help a guy out?" scam? At the age of 13, alone in a large city and before the scam was commonly known, I called it as a scam, mocked my friends for falling for it, and threatened the con artist with the cops. That is all I was saying ... I just saw that this scam has just made it's way on to Snopes.com ... hence the link in the first paragraph.
Amber,
Thanks for enlightening.
On calling that guy out at 13... need I repeat, you're tough!
Oh, oh, my absolute favorite story is the haggerd old lady with out teeth and only the vague remninets of hair who tells you that she just had kemo, has been reguritating all day, and just wants money for food. I just ignore her, but she tried this trick on a co-worker of mine who had recently been through Kemo. My co-worker polietly told the women that the story was impossible. I then restrained my co-worker from decking the little old lady. I latter allowed my co-worker to chase the little old lady through the park because she was thumbing through a huge wad of ill-gotten cash.
Though that is my favorite story, I also love the fat tooth-less lady in front of the post office who hits me up with the same story every day. I go in the afternoon, and she is always right there, and she always picks me out, and I always turn her down nicely. Tommy isn't so nice. The third day in a row Tommy yelled at the women to "change the F***ing story." So the next day she left the story out and just asked him for money.
Then there is the best line ever, "Can I have a quarter so i can buy a beer?" And my response "Shit man if you show me where I can get a beer for a quarter I'll give you twenty bucks." He laughed and asked me for a cigarette, which I gave to him. Then I was evil and refused to give him a light. :-D
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