Lady asking for money/food outside shop - AIBU?

[Fandango52]

When I was out food shopping earlier, a lady stood outside the shop with a pram said she’d escaped domestic violence and asked if I could give her any money for her electricity meter.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any money on me, and I was happy to help and wanted to help, so I asked if I could get her any food. She said some other people had already got food for her, but she asked if I could buy her some cornflakes.

I bought the cornflakes, but when I came out again, I couldn’t see her anywhere, so I went back inside the shop and got a refund for the cornflakes. I then left the shop to go home and noticed her on the other side of the shop, but she didn’t see me.

On the walk home, I was wondering if I should’ve searched more for her? I feel bad, as I was happy to buy her the cornflakes and they were what she’d asked her, but I thought she’d gone when I went out to give them to her.

AIBU to have returned the cornflakes and then gone home when I couldn’t see her?

YANBU.

If she wanted money for her electric, surely she could have asked if you'd put some on her card/key? The whole point of them is you take it to a shop, put money on and then insert into your meter, or with a card it's added to the account automatically.

On that basis alone I'd call it a load of crap.

She just wanted money. I'd also question if she even had a child in the pushchair unless you actually saw it. Very common tactic unfortunately.

It was almost certainly a tall tale. She buggered off because she wanted cash, not food.

Yeah, her story is very unlikely to be at all true.

I work in a frontline charity service and in my experience the majority of the “begging outside of shops” crowd are not in the kind of need they say they are. I personally don’t offer them money or food.

YANBU. What she really wanted was cash for her next heroin hit or to pass on the money to whatever gang was in charge

Oh well, there's a guy always outside my local Waitrose - I used to give him stuff (warm clothes when my Dad died, a meal if I'd cooked too much, etc). That was 20+ years ago, he's still there. Later learned he has a flat nearby a fancy bike, deals drugs & organises a shoplifting gang into the said Waitrose.
Once overheard someone ask him if he'd like them to get him some food. He came out with a long list that started off with smoked salmon.th

You got away lightly with cornflakes.
Think I'd have put them in the food bank collection point rather than ask for a refund.

Come on love. Wise up. She’s not interested in your kindness or your food. She’ll have been a druggie.

I gave money to a woman who’d had a fight with her boyfriend, run away as she was scared of him, so she had no phone or money for train fare to get to a friend. Needed a very exact amount to buy the train ticket.

Next week she gave me the exact same story.

There's a woman who used to hang around the Shoreditch area asking for money because she had been abused.

The first time I saw her, I offered to make a call to domestic abuse services or go with her to the police but she refused.

I then saw her quite frequently after that, sometimes with local druggies, always telling the same story.

She wanted hard cash, not cornflakes!

Seasoned beggars. Don’t be taken in again.

Yup a woman near our Waitrose apparently gets dropped off by a merc every morning. Sells the big issue then goes home to her flat. Another guy bragged to someone he was making hundreds every day when he wasn’t actually homeless but say there with a sleeping bag. People need to start giving to charities and stop giving these people money. They give money, ask in our local Facebook group what’s happened to the person then find out they’ve been scammed. Over and over

When I was a student and not as hardnosed.

I gave a man some money at the bus station. He needed money for the bus fare to get to hospital as his wife was giving birth and he didn't have enough.

About an hour later once I'd done my shopping or what ever business I had in town. I was getting my bus and saw him still there asking others for money.

I don't give on the street any more, haven't done for years. It doesn't help anyone. The last time I probably gave enough for the woman to overdose. That was enough to get me to ask myself what I thought i was doing.

I will buy the Big Issue sometimes, and I donate directly to the local Crisis along with other charities. And I pay my taxes and all that. Not that that's anything special, but don't forget that you do pay that stuff. Find a local charity supporting addiction treatment, mental health recovery or housing.

There are so many of these beggars with their slick stories, they all deserve Oscars.

I had a funny thing happen to me a few years ago. A woman stopped me and told me a story about her not having any food/money, and could I give her cash. We were close to a big Co-op but I had no actual cash money, and she then asked if I could buy her some basic bits (bread, cheese, cold meat) so she could make sandwiches for her kids. Okay.

When we got in she - no word of a lie - started picking out fancy cheeses, sourdough bread, posh ham etc. I am an idiot and paid because part of me thought I wouldn’t like sliced white bread or value cheddar, but when I got home and told DP about the deli picnic I had just bought a stranger he really did give me the side-eye!

That is the funniest thing I've read this week........

She’d told me she had recently arrived in the UK and had been housed in emergency accommodation with no cooking facilities, hence the sandwiches. One of the cheeses was a Camembert and that was definitely the point I knew I’d been had.

Outside the shops are usually "professional beggars"

We've watched them:
Be greeted by the head of the gang and hand over the cash

Fetch dirty clothes off to reveal design labels underneath and get in their cars which are better than ours

Fetch dirty sleeping bags out of said nice cars to start begging

My aunt used to work in a local Tesco Express type store where they had to advice people not to buy things for the supposedly homeless woman outside because they knew she would get dropped off by someone and go home later in the day and if they brought her food she'd try and bring it back for a refund once they'd left

It's feels harsh but you are much better to donate to local homeless shelters and street teams, they know the "real" cases who need support and can offer them the best help

I actually did ask if I could put it in the food bank collection but there wasn’t one unfortunately.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and posts. I had weighed up if I wanted to - and could - give her something and I decided that I did. I didn’t have cash on me so asked if she wanted food, she then asked for cornflakes and that’s what I bought.

The point of my post is not about whether I was ‘right’ to want to give her something, because I’d decided that I did and I was happy to.

My point was more that I felt bad because I’d agreed to give her something but then didn’t, because when I left the shop to give her the cornflakes, I couldn’t see her anywhere, and only saw her once I’d got a refund of the cornflakes and then left the shop.

To posters suggesting I should have donated the cornflakes to a food bank collection point, I agree with you that would have been the best thing to do, and I wanted to do that, but there wasn’t a collection point in the shop I was in unfortunately.

I can’t believe you’re feeling guilty over this! She told you she had other food. Do you think she wanted you to search for her to give her the cornflakes?

Why do you have to feel bad, she walked away so she didn’t want the cornflakes . Toughen up .

The last one to give me the bus fare spiel made me chuckle. You obviously haven't been on a local bus in years, mate, if you think you can get one around here after 7pm.

When I was a student there was a guy I used to see who looked the part begging outside a tube station in the evenings. I got a job in a local shop and he would come in just before closing every day and spend his takings on alcohol. One morning I got the earlier tube into uni and I saw him all smartened up with a briefcase presumably heading to work! I mean clearly he had issues but he clearly wasn’t homeless or destitute.