Today I was harassed by a homeless person. AIBU?

Yep, always the best way. If you're going to get a mouthful of abuse, you'd rather it be for cutting them off rather than appeasing them.

So you approached the barista making the drinks? Who doesn't have a till?!

I'm just asking because there seems to be this implication that you didn't just walk off because the drink had been ordered but not paid for.

The staff are trained to serve coffee not deal with this
as an ex trained police officer and now a teacher I have the public spirited confidence to step up and take charge when I see situations like this - however the vast majority of the ordinary public are nervous , fearful of making g a tit if themselves or more importantly getting hurt, I bet a few folks pondered the situation afterwards and wished they had helped you but were sadly more focused on getting their coffee

Next time say no , the advice from police and charities is to donate to charities by giving money you are funding their addiction and not achually helping them .

You were trying to be kind but it’s safer these days to stay away from ‘dodgy’ people. There are many people with mental health issues, many who are in scamming gangs and then there are addicts who just want money for drugs.
If you want to help just give money to appropriate charities. We live in a very sad world.

I’ve replied below to make it a little bit clearer for you.

The decent thing to have done is for husband to either advise against saying he's there and then or offer to get the drink himself. Not speak in hindsight.

Lessons learned today (sadly).

Oh no worries, here you go. It can be hard to pick salient information out from a number of paragraphs sometimes.

My husband could tell by my face that something had changed and walked closer, between where we were and where my kids were.

My husband was worried but also fearful to walk my children over and was genuinely out of ear shot.

That really depends on the age of the kids and who else was about. There isn't always a kindly family handy to watch your kids nor would I trust strangers with my child. Op has explained she had her back to him so while he was keeping an eye on the interaction he couldn't see clearly. And irregardless its quite clear from what this person told op, the husband getting involved would more than likely have escalated the situation potentially resulting in the husband coming to harm in front of op and the kids.

Yes, thank you. You don't order, shuffle along the queue and then collect the drink and pay.

When you were asking to pay, had the coffee already been ordered/made or not?

What would have been your expectation from the other people in the queue OP?

Exactly

You’ve done nothing wrong.
You were being kind.
I would have left and not paid given what was happening.
Don’t blame yourself but also don’t be quick to offer help to someone like that again!
Sorry you weren’t helped by anyone. I like to think even as a 38 year old small woman myself I’d have helped somehow!

Words are Words, get a thick skin. I would gladly make what attempt I can if any protection was actually needed, but you are your own person, responsible for yourself even when that happens expecting special treatment because someone weird says something weird is frankly as crazy as the homeless person.

And I am male, so vastly more likely to be the victim of crime, violent crime, assault, and murder than a woman.

But in your scenario you still paid for your coffee before it was made. That is what we are saying.

Op is indicating that the drink had been made already and she still needed to pay for it. Otherwise why wouldn’t she just leave?

Go on then....

He could have easily called out to OP. Told the kids to stay put and walked over. Asked a family to watch.

This coffee shop couldn't have been that big....

I'm cannot understand him not protecting his wife that he knew was scared/uncomfortable

FFS, OP described it multiple times across her posts. I can basically draw a diagram by now with the layout of the coffee shop and who was where when the event happend.

I think your husband was unreasonable in this situation,
If you clearly looked uncomfortable he should have come over. My DH would have offered to go over with the person and I wait with the children

You should have left the queue when the person turned weird. People probably didn't intervene because they probably thought you were together.

It's easy for people to say with hindsight what you couldn't have done differently. I guess in the moment it's hard to think clearly if you are scared or panicking.

I do think that YABU to expect other people in the queue to have stepped in when you were too scared to ask the staff for help or call your husband over.
If you were that scared then they probably were too.

If anything like this ever happens again OP, and hopefully it won't, ask the staff for help.
Have you heard of Ask for Angela? You could have tried that. I don't know if all hospitality places train their staff how to deal with an Ask for Angela request though.

It's horrible what happened to you and the only person at fault was the man who scared you.

If this was me and my family and I had been "targeted" and said 'yes we will buy you a drink.DH can you take them, I'll sort the kids ".

And if not , my DH would have immediately stepped in and said "I'll sort this, you take the kids love ".

And even if he was distracted and I had gone off and left him and the kids, and he THEN realised something was wrong, he would have either immediately come straight to me (with the kids) or asked a woman/family "would you just mind the kids, I need to speak to my wife " ...and come straight to me.

Or he would have called out saying something like "Ressica, the kids want you" or anything like that to give me an out/make it clear he was there and coming.... and IMMEDIATELY COME STRAIGHT TO ME.

The DH standing by is so odd.

I don’t visit many coffee shops but I went into Starbucks and the til was right at the end.

I had to wait to get there (because there was a queue) before paying for my coffee and then waited after that for the drink to be made.

I am imagining something like that.