To have wanted to give this woman £20?

[saltnpepa]

There was a woman in front of me in the queue in the supermarket with her two children and she was asking the cashier to put things back and then was working out what food items she could swap to keep in budget. She explained to the cashier that she needed to keep the shop under £40 and I could see she was watching every penny of that shop, putting back eggs and swapping them for bread etc. She held the queue up and I think she felt uncomfortable about that and all the time her 2 children waited with a bar of chocolate each to see if there was money left at the end of the shop to afford the chocolate bar.

I remember my own mother struggling like this at the supermarket and I know how canny this woman has to be to make her shop last and to manage money. I could tell she wasn't just budgeting, rather that they really didn't have much money. At this point in my life I can spare £20 and so I got £20 cash back after my shop and wanted to go and give it to this woman. I was going to say to her that I remembered my Mum struggling a bit with money and that I just wanted to give her £20 to buy whatever she wanted with. I saw her outside the supermarket but I didn't give her the money. I worried she would be insulted, that her children might worry, that she might be ok with her situation. So for all those reasons I didn't but if she needed £20 she might have been happy with that gift from a stranger.

Yes Duty - but isn't that because you knew you had the money, just had the wrong card? Perhaps if you'd been on your last few pennies you wouldn't have been quite so humiliated - your humiliation, I would think, comes from the man thinking you were poorer than you actually are.

what i usually do is drop the money on the floor then let them notice you picking it up and say i think you dropped this.
Then it isn't insultin and works everytine

DutyFruitywhy let someone else pay if you don't need that help? A simple no thank you would work, how do you know that man had enough to help? He might have just been very kind. The children weren't hungry btw, they were happy enough. I once offered a woman a coat who had been sleeping in my doorway for a couple of nights when I was a young student, she went absolutely mental at me and was very insulted, I think that has put me off. Some of the stories here are heartwarming.

People are very hung up on the chocolate. My 3 boys have been known to helpfully appear with hopeful expressions and chocolate or a magazine. If I am harassed then I may not make it a priority to get them to put it down immediately (mentally totting up spend/trying to find my wallet/grappling with the conveyor belt and next customer sign).

If I don't want them to have it I will always manage to get them to put it back with a little whinging. Nobody dwells on this trauma for very long!

I said this before on similar threads and i am going to say it again and again and again:
When you are skint, you are also miserable and stressed. VERY stressed. That's when the brain blocks!
I have been skint and i have been ok.
When i was skint it is when i kept making mistakes and wrong decisions.
When i am ok i can make very sensible decisions, i can shop very clever. I can sit on my sofa in my warm house and give you brain storms and solutions and 100s things that this woman could/should have done i.e. calculator, smart choices blah blah..

But i know the awful miserable feeling of being skint and how it robs you your creativity and your logic.

Poor people are not stupid with poor budgeting skills and with no brains. They are STRESSED. And often depressed too. They have to think short term.

Now i will breath...
And i will repeat it on the next thread!
In capital letters.

Duty
you can see that in a positive way.
I would say 'no thank you' and i would think how nice it is that peoplewant to help and next time he will help someone who needs it.

I use a calculator whilst shopping as this is my worst nightmare! Saves a lot of embarrassment!

lol this reminded me of this:

No one knows this ladies mathmatical skills...She was shopping on a tight budget with 2 children...Hardly an easy way to look for the cheap well balanced food.

She could have been distracted and forgotten to add an item to the total in her head or whatever. I think the OP had a lovely thought. I am glad people who think like that still exist.

Oh, and I gave some money to a homeless person the other day, even though I KNOW his injury is self inflicted for sympathy. To my mind, anyone desperate enough to do that perhaps deserves a break and perhaps does so because that's what it takes to get enough money for food. There. The cynics can flame me too!

I'd personally of bought all her extra shopping and tried to find her in the car park, dumping her with it and quickly disappearing.

I can't imagine anyone would deliberately hold up a cue expectantly for some generous person to pay for their shopping.
I've been in the position where your so tired and bogged down, that organisation just flies out of the window. Also were making assumptions she has a phone/calculator or the ability to efficiently use mental maths. I know when I've been depressed and scared shitless to leave the house that mental maths abilities I had disappeared I just wanted to get home.
The kids holding the chocolate is not emotional abuse she just made a mistake.
I sound like a right lentil weaving tree hugger by saying this, but spreading a little love or joy in someone's life is so rewarding. So if you can do it why not. We all need a little kindness now and then.
skips if to write a smushy piece of musical theatre

DutyFruitywhy let someone else pay if you don't need that help? A simple no thank you would work

It didn't work though. I was flustered and embarrassed, he was insisting despite me refusing, the queue was getting longer and people were shuffling and huffing and I started to feel ungrateful/surly iyswim?

Awkward doesn't describe it. He was really insistent...in a very kind way but enough to corner me...he did appear to be just a lovely man but I really, really wish he hadn't have.

It wouldn't occur to me that someone was scamming me for groceries I would have offered to pay for the extras if they were a fiver or so.

I always help people if I can. I don't actually care if occasionally they might not be genuine, I'll take the chance. DW is the same, neither of us can stand to see people struggling if we can help. Agree though that it's difficult to do this sometimes without embarrassing people.